Inspired by the true story of Marion Crawford, the woman who raised Queen Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret for 17 years, a royal scandal ignites blistering fire between the steely Queen Mother and her children’s doting Nanny. From the creative team behind the nation-wide success of The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race (now a feature film starring Claire Van De Boom), this black comedy imagines a series of pivotal moments between two strong-spirited women harbouring complicated resentment.

Written by self-professed royal obsessed Melanie Tait who grew up in Robertson, The Queen’s Nanny is told through an Australian lens. The play’s performances in Wollongong will coincide with King Charles and Queen Camilla’s visit to Australia this month.

Do you have a favourite memory of growing up in Robertson?

Gosh, yeah. I spent my whole childhood playing in cow paddocks. That sounds kind of weird, doesn’t it? But there’s lots of little rainforests and gullies and things like that in Robertson, and so I would roam free until we had to be home at five o’clock. That’s what I loved about growing up in Robertson. And I just feel like not many kids get that anymore. And a lot of that land has been built up now in Robertson as well.

I was a bit of a nerd. I was always into theatre and stuff, and I used to think I was such a romantic. I’d take my collected Shakespeare and go down to this creek, which was like a couple of cow paddocks away and sit and read by the creek with my Shakespeare. What pretentious little rat bag, don’t you think? 

What does it mean to you for the Queen’s Nanny to be performed here in Wollongong?

I’m so excited about it. I went to Wollongong Uni and I did creative arts in acting. I didn’t finish it, so I don’t have a degree in it, but we used to do the end of year performances work at the IPAC. I’m so excited that it’s more accessible to Robertson, so I hope that people will be able to go down and see it. I don’t think my last play, The Appleton Ladies Potato Race which is inspired by Robertson ever actually came to Wollongong, and I was always really disappointed by that. I’m just so glad to have some work there.

I went to school in Bowral and a whole heap of my pals from school are coming to see The Queen’s Nanny. One of my friends who still works in Bowral, she took a heap of flyers and she’s giving them to every client who walks through her door to go and see it in Wollongong. Hopefully there’ll be a big southern highlands contingent there.

How did you find out about Marion Crawford’s (Crawfie) story, what got you hooked? 

I’ve always kind of known about Crawfie, I’m a bit tragic when it comes to knowing way more than I should about the royal family. I always have been super interested in them. I’m not a royalist, but as a kid, I think I probably was, an I’ve just never lost my interest. I’m a massive nerd for it. 

During Covid, in April 2022, Tina Brown, a great English journalist put out a book called The Palace Papers. And The Palace Papers is my absolute favourite of all of them. She had a chapter about staff in that book and I didn’t realise Marion Crawford was born about 10 minutes from where my family still live in Scotland.

That piqued my interest because I felt like I’d spent a lot of time in Ayrshire and in Irvine over the years and I sort of felt like I knew what kind of woman she was. I knew what she’d sound like, I kind of knew her social class, I felt I knew more about her. The story became more intriguing because of that personal connection. I just kept thinking the story between her and the Queen Mother would just be so interesting on stage.

The Queen Mother is one of the great untapped characters of the 20th century. She’s so funny and so tough and so complicated, I’d always thought she’d be an interesting character. But the two of them together, it just made sense for me to make a play about them. And when I sort of really dug into the story, there was just so much in it that I had no choice but to write it. 

What does it mean to explore Crawford’s story through an Australian lens?

I think that when I sat down to write it, it was without that sense of deference towards the royal family or that sense of deference towards a class system. There are, of course, class differentiations in Australia. We live in a capitalist society, but at least we pay lip service to be an egalitarian society.

I don’t think Australians have that sense of deference to people who are in a higher class. For example, it might just mean they’re richer than us. We never think that it means that they’re better than us. So I think through an Australian lens, it means that somebody like Crawford will be centred, that it’s not a story about the royal family, it’s a story about this Scottish woman and the fact that she happened to have this bird’s eye view of the most famous family of the 20th century for 17 years. 

I think people see that it’s called the Queen’s Nanny, and set in the 1950s and think it’s going to be a period piece like The Crown. And it could not be further from it. It is a beautiful piece of theatre, really fast moving, funny, but also pretty heartbreaking at times as well. You couldn’t have this experience in a cinema, it’s so intensely theatrical.

As the writer of The Queen’s Nanny, what’s your role in the production of the show?

The director of the play, Priscilla Jackman, has also been my bestie since we were 19. We’ve done so much together over the years, so we really work as a partnership. I’ll consult with Priscilla on drafts and she’ll say ‘here’s what’s missing, here’s what I think we need more of’ and I’ll go away and work on that. We do workshops with actors, with Ensemble Theatre, where you get to have two weeks of working with actors on the floor with the script, seeing where it’s working, where it’s lagging and what’s needed or maybe needs to be added.

When you get into rehearsal, there’s more of that for a week or two, and I’m there for that. After that, I clear out and drop in every now and again to cast my eye over it and make sure that rhythmically things are working with the writing, that they’re working emotionally, that we’re telling the story that we want to. So I’m really involved in it. And these actors that are in it are so dextrous, and so at the top of their game that I was giving them changes all through the previews. They changed an entire scene the night before our opening. They’re amazing. They just ride through it and do it. So I’m always there.

What do you hope audiences take away from the show?

I always hope, and I think this goes for all of my plays, I just want audiences to really enjoy it. I don’t want anybody ever to be sitting in my play thinking ‘oh my god, I cannot believe I spent X amount of dollars on this and got a babysitter’. And ‘oh my god, my friend is so bored’. I always want my plays to be completely accessible for an audience, I want them to be interesting, fun, and about something real.

Personally, as an audience member, I always want to laugh and feel when I’m at the theatre. I love going to the theatre to have a cry, we can find catharsis through other people and their stories when sometimes it’s a bit hard to do our self. I want an audience to really, really enjoy it, have a fantastic time, and feel something. I would also really love it if they would go out into the lobby and talk about it.

The play has a bit of an ambiguous ending, and people will go out talking about that, what they think happened. I love that. I want audiences to want go and tell all their friends to go and see it too! And then on top of that, anytime they see that there’s a play written by me, I want them to think ‘oh my god, I really love the Queen’s Nanny, I’m going to go and see that’. 

Why should people come to watch The Queen’s Nanny?

This is a really wonderful story told by people at the top of their game. I think it’s a play that you just won’t have seen it before. There’s nothing else on your stage at the moment that looks and sounds and feels like this show. It’s a great night that I think will leave your heart full as well. Who doesn’t want that?