Playwright’s Note: Melanie Tait, THE QUEEN’S NANNY
I started working on this play around the time the Albanese Labor Government was voted in.
Full of hope, I felt certain when the play got to the stage, we’d have lived through a successful Australian Indigenous Voice Referendum and, in an election year, movement would be ramping up about a new Republic Referendum. I wanted this play to be part of that conversation.
Instead, I write this note a week after a cabinet reshuffle, where, in the wake of last year’s referendum, the Albanese Government has abolished the Assistant Ministry for the Republic. We’re about to welcome (and spend tax-payer money on) a visit from King Charles III and Queen Camilla, who’ve just had £45M of public money added to their annual income while the rest of the UK suffers a crippling cost of living crisis.
An Australian Republic is much further away than it was two years ago.
While our Head of State is a man sovereign by accident of birth, in a country on the other side of the earth, THE QUEEN’S NANNY is our story too. I hope it asks questions about the people our society values, and puts Marion Crawford’s story front and centre – a working class Scottish woman, shamed and ousted from the family she spent two decades of her life dedicated to.
She was a pioneer: the OG Royal memoirist. Her book was the first insight into the Royals behind closed doors – showing them as a relatively loving, normal family. The Queen Mother’s concern about the book was warranted – what would it mean for the people of the British Empire to know they were being ‘ruled over’ and funding a family who are really a rather average lot?
At the time, it was a PR coup for everyone but Crawfie. In the context of 2024, in a post Diana: Her True Story and Spare world, Marion Crawford’s story adds to the myriad of reasons why The Crown should be relegated to history books and Netflix series, and Australia should stand completely on its own feet.
Melanie Tait
Playing 6 Sep – 12 Oct, book your tickets to THE QUEEN’S NANNY!