Nell Gwynn, Shakespeare's Globe ****

Jessica Swale is a brilliant young talent whose impact on the Globe has been a fresh of fresh air. Blue Stockings was fun and beautiful yet challenging, though-provoking and shocking. Now she has written another play for the space about the infamous Nell Gwynn with a send up of theatre in a charming and lavish production. This is such a self-deprecating play that is like a heightened version of Shakespeare in Love with Restoration theatre. You have Dryden, Charles II, Charles Hart and Gwynn very much as caricatures which could be tedious but ends up being belly-achingly funny because of the self aware nature of Swale's writing and Christopher Luscombe's production. The lavish and decadent design from Hugh Durrant evokes the majesty of the theatre and court whilst there are undercurrents of Gwynn's lowly birth through a fantastic yet short performance from Sarah Woodward as Nell's mother who drank from a man's drink. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is comical, feisty and an independent Nell who helps bring a feminist quality to the piece through the comedy. The rest of the cast are also fantastic, notably David Sturzaker's bewildered and fun king and Greg Hastie as the threatened actor who plays the women parts who has a fantastic sequence in showing the many different uses of a fan. This must be the funniest play produced on the Globe stage.