The Regina Monologues

This is a play about Henry's six wives. However, these are not the wives of a Tudor monarch but very modern ladies who all married a rich businessman of dubious morality.

It's a neat idea in the main, nicely executed (although none of these wives are). If I have a problem with it, it is that there is a vacuum at its core. I had no real idea what this Henry was like, except through the monologues of Katie, the Kathryn Howard equivalent, where his ageing lust for a school girl is genuinely disturbing.

That central hole apart there's a lot to enjoy, not least the purple set, full of splendidly tasteless clutter. Each wife tells part of her story in turn and the greatest pleasures are to be had from picking up the modern parallels with the Tudor spouses. The most delightful of these are in Anne of Cleves' section where internet dating stands for the Holbein portrait and she is rejected because - but no, you'll have to see that for yourself.
Katherine Barry plays it with real panache.

I also like Tina Swain as Katherine (Parr) who's prepared to stick by an old man through thick and thin - as long as he can keep her very well-provided for.

It's good to see a new play that has such meaty parts for a company of women. There are good jokes, many of them not printable on a respectable website - it is after all no co-incidence that the title sounds not dissimilar to a recent theatrical phenomenon. If it doesn't quite succeed overall, at least it's ambitious, different and certainly never boring.