Date/Time: Wednesday, 6th December 2023 at 14:30 - 16:45
Location: Duke of York's Theatre, St Martin's Lane, London, WC2N 4BG
Price: £43 per person. Member and guest £86. Face value £95pp
Event Organiser: Pete Wells. 7, Wayfaring Court, Safflower Lane, Romford RM3 0LQ
Luke Evans (Beauty and the Beast) returns to the West End this autumn to star alongside Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey) in a new play about the Queen Mother’s relationship with her most loyal servant, William Tallon.
“When I read the script, it made me giggle out loud so hard,” said Evans. “It’s just so entertaining and such a joyous story about these two people: the Queen Mother, who was super famous, but also Billy. He was always there and spent most of his life working for her.”
Wilton described Backstairs Billy as “a joyful and compassionate play. It brings the Queen Mother into Technicolor rather than being a pastel person in pale chiffon. She suddenly becomes a very vibrant person and we see her for herself, not just for being the Queen’s mother. Billy allowed her to be who she was.”
She stressed that, despite being a comedy, the play is by no means a “send-up”. It is “a celebration of the Queen Mother, who has been rather sidelined”, Wilton said, adding: “It’s very nice to be in on the birth of a new comedy because there aren’t that many around. This is a new comedy voice. The author, Dos Santos, has a mixture of Alan Bennett, Alan Ayckbourn and – dare I say – Noël Coward.”
Billy was a man of many talents: a dance partner, gin supplier and manager of his boss’s famous lunch parties. He was also known for his powerful sex drive, which saw him bring young men back to Clarence House for late-night trysts.
At the Queen Mother’s lunch parties Tallon would ensure that everyone had an alcoholic drink and would even pour wine through a guest’s fingers if they tried to cover up their glass. Once guests had left, Tallon would ridicule or mock them to make the Queen Mother laugh.
Tallon relied on the Queen Mother for job security; when her mind began to fail in her final decade he was no longer safe. He was later barred from her personal quarters. When she died aged 101 in 2002, no member of the Royal Household told him of her passing; instead he found out from a journalist.
Billy was found dead at his ground-floor flat in in 2007, having suffered liver failure.
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