Jeweller’s pact with the Queen is a gem

MAURICE’S JUBILEE Opera House, Manchester
WHAT an unexpected pleasure — especially when you consider the subject is the imminent death of an elderly, likeable man.

Maurice (Julian Glover) and his wife Helena (Sheila Reid) have come down in the world since he lost money from his successful jewellery business in the bank crash. They are joined by live-in private nurse Katie (Nichola McAuliffe, who also wrote the show) because Maurice has weeks to live.

But he is in denial for an extraordinary reason: 60 years before, he spent a night alone in the young Queen’s company, when he collected the royal jewels for safekeeping for the coronation next day.

They made a pact: if she made it to 60 years on the throne that would be his 90th birthday, and she would come to visit him. He has to make it to his birthday.

The trouble is, that meeting has tainted his relationship with his wife: he and the Queen fell in love — a little — that night, and though his wife and son never believed his story about her, both harboured resentment that he could remain aloof from them.

Along the way, Maurice is jaunty, jokey and lively with the two women — culminating in a wonderful monologue to close the first act in which he pours out his heart.

And in the second? Well, it’s his birthday, the eve of the Diamond Jubilee, and he’s ready for the visit... which duly happens.

At first we wonder if this is part of illness-induced delusion or trickery; but no, we believe the Queen (McAuliffe again) has turned up to fulfil a promise in her diary for 60 years. What’s more it’s entirely believable, in the touching, amusing and ultimately sad way McAuliffe writes it.

As a playwright, the famous actress packs in an enormous amount: emotion, comedy — there are some cracking jokes; great depth of character and a story that is sentimental and fantastic yes, but also warm, thoroughly charming and wonderfully entertaining.

The three performers are inch-perfect, especially Glover, who normally plays villainous, rather callous characters and here is man who might have taken a single meeting much too far, but whose depth of emotion over it isn’t in doubt.