This play is up against a difficulty from the start. Everyone has enough claims on their sympathy without having to spare any for Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom Edward VIII abdicated his claim to the throne. Her life was apparently devoted to herself and her self-aggrandisement. She loved or cultivated people for their wealth, social standing and power, and her friends included Hitler and von Ribbentrop.
       Untitled was set in the late 1970s, with the widowed Wallis living in Paris, reminiscing and reliving with her butler scenes from her past life, while sinking into Parkinsonian decrepitude and death. Nicola McAuliffe was wonderfully convincing as the ruthless, waspish Wallis, Patrick Ryecart excellently repressed and wry as her butler (often doubling up as Edward in her reminiscences). The fluctuating power-play between them was brilliantly depicted, and there was a clever conceit of her daubing herself in make-up or cold cream which ultimately turned into the raddled white face of a corpse. But it was hard to be moved by the representation of a historical figure known to be so poisonous. Were we even meant to be? It wasn't clear, and if Wallis's Nazi sympathies were virtually unmentioned, and the play sensibly remained ambivalent about the degree to which her connection to Edward was inspired by ambition or love, it certainly gave an unmitigated portrayal of her ruthlessness. How far her pert wit and camp bravery were supposed to be redeeeming features was uncertain.
       Although the programme doesn't say when Untitled was written (only that it was Lena Farugia's first play), it was probably written at around the time of Princess Diana's death. That would at least have given it a contemporary relevance, given the parallels between the two women's treatment by ‘the Firm' (Diana's name for the Royal Family), which in each case closed ranks against princes' wives who were perceived as interlopers. (Diana visited the Villa Windsor on 30th August 1997, the day before her death.) But this would have been a rather irrelevant relevance, and if we were being invited to side with Wallis against the royals, then actually, as with Diana, there seemed a pretty equal share of spoilt narcissism. I was unclear why anyone would want to write a play about Wallis Simpson before going to see Untitled, and equally unclear after seeing it. What is clear is the unlikelihood of anyone who goes to this play a monarchist not coming out of it a republican.
Jane O'Grady