Drury Lane

Alice Merivale as Nell Gwyn, resting her chin on her arms on a staircase, looking thoughtfully to the side, in Sarastro restaurant, filled with vintage furniture and decor.
Robert Kingham with Alice Merivale as Nell Gwyn, outside The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

An exploration of the rich cultural history of one of London’s most colourful, creative and dangerous quarters, with Alice Merivale as Nell Gwyn. A bawdy, boozy bacchanal, bursting with obscure factlets, dramatic sweeps of history, dark mysteriousness, musical protrusions and theatrical surprises.

Squalor, crime, politics and plague provide the scenery for a teeming cast of rakes and poets, actors and gamblers, playwrights and pickpockets, Freemasons and highwaymen, engravers and compositors, gunpowder plotters and pornographers, butchers and beadles, judges and jail-breakers, suffragettes and whores, in a story that stretches from Anglo-Saxon settlers on the shores of the Thames to the starched pomp of the British Empire.

Robert Kingham with Alice Merivale as Nell Gwyn, outside The Royal Courts of Justice. Robert has an orange.
Black and white promotional poster featuring Robert Kingham with Alice Merivale as Nell Gwyn. The text references Samuel Pepys' Diary from June 7, 1665, with the title "Drury Lane" in glowing red script and "MINIMUM LABYRINTH" at the bottom.

‘A great adventure! I really enjoyed the whole experience’

‘What a fantastic afternoon’

‘A superb piece of informed entertainment’

‘I loved every minute’

‘Alice is simply brilliant’

‘Each production better than the last’

Alice Merivale as Nell Gwyn. A woman dressed in a historical costume standing next to a large globe outdoors near a building with brick and glass walls.
Robert Kingham with Alice Merivale as Nell Gwyn.

Alice Merivale grew up in Liverpool and trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, before plunging into a world of Shakespeare, musicals, and immersive theatre (Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds). She appears in Midas Man and Doin’ the Lambeth Walk (Oi!).

Ms Merivale’s costume by Ruth Hewitt of Admiral Costumes.