A new play to hit IPAC tells the true story of Marion “Crawfie” Crawford, the nanny to two princesses who would one day become a palace pariah. Photo: Phil Erbacher.
“Who doesn’t love a royal scandal?”
This opening line from a teaser says it all. Though the true story of Marion “Crawfie” Crawford – the woman who raised Queen Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret for 17 years – didn’t make the cut for The Crown, it will hit the Illawarra Performing Art Centre’s stage soon.
The Ensemble Theatre has just opened the world premiere of the play The Queen’s Nanny in Sydney, and Wollongong is the very next stop.
Award-winning and self-professed “royal obsessed” playwright Melanie Tait applies an impressive, borderline esoteric knowledge of the royal family to this tale, which she says is “really funny … until it’s not”.
“If you’re a glass-half-full person you might think it’s actually a positive ending. If not, you might find yourself wanting to picket outside Buckingham Palace next time you’re in London,” she says.
Crawfie was given approval by the royal family to publish anonymously a book she had authored about her time with them, but after it appeared under her name, no member of the family spoke to her again.
Until her death, Crawfie kept items of Queen Elizabeth’s, including teenage letters and belongings, and never sold them. To this day these items sit protected in the Royal Archive, never having been seen by the public before.
“It is sad to think she was ousted for a memoir about these two little princesses that were such a big part of her life for 17 years,” Mel says.
Melanie says it’s an ironic end to the nanny’s relationship with the royal family, as Crawfie had never expected to be with them longer than three months, but “through various accidents of history”, kept being asked to stay on.
One of Crawfie’s dearest wishes was to teach children in the Glasgow tenements in her native Scotland.
“Instead she ended up teaching the two most privileged girls in England for 17 years,” Mel says. “She served that family through the abjuration and World War II … In the end, this chapter of the story of the royals seems to have been deliberately swept under the rug … in royal circles, it wasn’t to be spoken about.”
While Melanie generally needs little coaxing to delve into a royal story, a geographical and cultural connection drew her to this particular chapter.
Crawfie was a Scot, born about 10 minutes away from where Melanie’s family now live.
“I felt I knew who she would’ve been before she went to work for the royal family, the world she lived in, and the extraordinary leap it would have been for her to go work in London, in Buckingham Palace no less,” she says.
Melanie’s previous works include The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race, now a feature film starring Claire van der Boom, Genevieve Lemon and Robyn Nevin.
The former University of Wollongong creative arts student says the fact that (Queen “Lillibet” Elizabeth) is played by a male actor at ages five, 12, 21 and 60 is one of the things that makes the play quite special.
“What these actors do with very little, to accommodate the constraints of theatre, is one of the really extraordinary things about this play,” she says.
“That spareness and simplicity not only draws you in but keeps your attention the entire time.
“There’s also an undeniable fascination about stories surrounding the royal family … They are there because of an accident of birth that none of us have had. They’re a fairly average bunch of people, and I think it’s interesting for the public to watch what they do with all the privilege that comes from that accident.”
The Queen’s Nanny plays at IPAC from Wednesday 16 to Saturday 19 October – book tickets via Merringong.
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