It's been a few days and still I find myself mightily confused by The Last of the Duchess, Nicholas Wright's new play about the last days of Wallis Simpson - well, kind of. It's based on Lady Caroline Blackwood's biographical portrait of Simpson, but really focuses far more on her fiery lawyer, Maitre Suzanne Blum, who guarded her and her affairs in the last few years of her life. We only see Simpson once, and that's a dream-state version.
As Lady Caroline, who visits the Windsors' house in the Bois de Boulogne and discovers what she sees as some very peculiar goings on, Anna Chancellor is typically commanding, bringing a warmth and also a steeliness to the writer desperate for a scoop, but who is loath to expose her own issues. John Heffernan is superb as ever as Blum's assistant Michael Bloch, who supports her despite his own misgivings - mainly, it would seem, because she is helping him to write a book about Simpson (for more on this, read Hugo Vickers' Behind Closed Doors). Heffernan shows off his emotional range as much as possible, and has some strong moments, mainly when coming to terms with the fact Lady Caroline is not everything he thought she would be, but the character's confines don't allow him to show off what he can really do.
Played snappily by Sheila Hancock (plus a dodgy French accent), Blum comes off as a dragon, ready to tell lies or twist the truth about her employer when any hint of impropriety is mentioned. She only reveals more to her character towards the end of the play, and you are left wondering exactly what it is Wright is trying to say - if anything at all. He implies that Simpson has already been bumped off and Blum is stealing her possessions for herself - but this is soon retracted. It feels like an over-dramatic momentary slump into weird murder-mystery territory that doesn't quite work. Meanwhile, what he reveals about Blum's reasons for behaving the way she does still don't really tally with her status as a lawyer - this feels like messy writing, unless in fact it is all true, which, if you've read up on the story, might not surprise...
The saviour of the play is undoubtedly Angela Thorne as Lady Diana Mosley, who was a good friend of Simpson's. Without her, it would simply be a somewhat dull two hours (despite the presence of Chancellor and Heffernan), but as she waltzs in in the second half, accompanied by a million brilliantly zingy one-liners (so, Wright, you can do it when you want to...), you sigh with relief and relax. Everything that happens in her presence is broken up by humour - but once she departs, the audience is left bereft. It's hard to see where else she could fit, but something feels rather off about the structure of the play. Overall, fun, but very confused. As am I.
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