Glorious! ★★★★

Windsor has been in the news a great deal recently, and for all the wrong reasons. Its residents must be in need of some good old-fashioned comedy, and now they have something fun and entertaining to see at the Theatre Royal, Windsor. Thomas Hopkins Productions, along with Haffner Wright Theatricals and SAMS Entertainment, is offering the Hope Mill Theatre production of Glorious! at this lovely theatre until 21st March. This stop is part of the show’s 20th anniversary tour around UK venues, having kicked off at the Hope Mill Theatre a year ago, twenty years after the show was originally written by Peter Quilter (End of the Rainbow, Duets, and Boyband). It’s loosely based on the real-life story of deluded heiress and socialite Florence Foster Jenkins, who became celebrated in New York circles for being the “worst singer in the world”. The play has been successfully performed around the globe, and you may also know the story from the 2016 film, starring Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant. Like Foster Jenkins, we can all be a little delusional at times, and who can say that if we had wealth and connections, we wouldn’t also use that money and our networking to pursue our passions? So how will this show tell her story without ridiculing her unnecessarily? Well, this gentle and sensitive production provides us with a fond look back at Foster Jenkins’s later life through the eyes of her last piano accompanist, Cosmé McMoon, and delivers some spectacularly bad singing combined with plenty of laughter along the way, plus a standout performance from Wendi Peters (Coronation Street, Doctors, Sister Act) in the lead role.

The theatre sits below the imposing castle, and the auditorium is suitably royal with plush ruby velvet seating, gold signage and a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. The heavy stage curtain is lit with the play’s name, and there are the strains of arias being played through the sound system. The creative team has neatly blended the colours, costumes and antique furniture with the surroundings to recreate the 1940s set. It starts with Cosmé reminiscing about his time working for Foster Jenkins and how he came to be employed as her pianist. Through a series of scenes we are introduced to Foster Jenkins and witness his reaction to her unique voice and why he comes to admire and respect her fortitude. Unsurprisingly, he agrees to work for her when she offers to triple his earnings, even though it is clear that her singing offends his ears. The first half is largely comic as the new version of the script enthusiastically pokes fun at the situations Foster Jenkins creates for herself and into which Cosmé finds himself dragged. There is a skit with her Italian housemaid, Maria, and much fun is watching her demonstrate her prodigious vocal talents to this appalled musician. However, in the second half we get a glimpse of how she really feels about her art and her detractors. She seems predominantly thick-skinned, but there are hints, after she encounters one such critic during one of her legendary recitals, that she has insecurities and losses in her life which have made her even more determined to make her own special music, even if it needs to be funded from her inheritance. The culmination is being offered her own concert at Carnegie Hall if she provides the money. This was to be her first and last public performance in real life, and the show’s final speech by Cosmé is particularly poignant.

Director Kirk Jameson (I Am Harvey Milk, Buyer and Cellar, and Song From Far Away) has honed his versatile actors well so that they are exaggerated enough for the laughs from the script but not so overdone as to be unbelievable. The movement around the stage is carefully controlled, and every actor is encouraged to shine, though some still need to learn to take a beat in the dialogue when the audience is laughing.

Both Wendi Peters and her co-star Matthew James Morrison (EastEnders, Blue/Orange, and All That), as Cosmé, are best known for their roles in popular British soap operas. Peters may be no stranger to TV drama and celebrity shows, but she also has an impressive list of theatre credits and usually has a beautiful singing voice. It must be extremely difficult to hit all those wrong notes so confidently when you just want to hit the right ones instead, but Peters hits every jarringly sharp and flat note perfectly. She pulls some wonderfully comical faces as she warbles discordantly through some well-known classical songs, making us wince and laugh with equal measure. She plays Foster Jenkins, physically stooped but also pent up with sheer joy. Foster Jenkins loves her life and gives thanks for her fortunes, and you can feel it in Peters’s fun-filled and endearing execution of the role. She also delivers a lovely, clearly spoken performance with much rise and fall in her upper-register American accent that is much more musical than her character’s singing voice.

Morrison plays closeted young Cosmé as sweet, tentative and initially uneasy about his situation. He is constantly pushing his glasses up his nose and grimacing with every bum note his employer hits. Morrison is very tall and towers over Peters by at least a foot and a half, but this helps convey why his character feels protective of hers, and he makes us feel that Cosmé has a genuine affection for this older, affluent, yet deluded woman.

The cast is completed by two other actors. Sioned Jones (The Letter, Shadowlands, and Shakespeare in Love) appears as close friend Dorothy, giving a light-hearted performance with a touch of dance as she tells stories about their times together and how she really believes her pal is a great singer. The final two characters of Maria and Mrs Verrinder Gedge, Foster Jenkins’s fierce critic, are taken by Caroline Gruber (Witness for the Prosecution, As Long As We Are Breathing, and The Arc). She gives Maria some farcical mannerisms, plus rapid-fire, unintelligible Italianese. Meanwhile, her Mrs Gedge is formidable and blunt, upright and unafraid of hurting feelings, uncharitable and aghast at her opponent’s behaviour.

This pleasurable production is the antidote to 2026’s bleak news. Glorious! glories in the stories about a woman who lived in the last century and wanted to share her good fortune and musical passions with others. There is nothing off-key about Peters’ performance, apart from the intentional flat notes, and she more than lives up to the show’s title!