Mon Droit

This curious two-hander is inspired by the real-life discovery of royal-obsessive Robert Moore’s body on an island in London’s St James’s Park in 2011.

Mike McShane (still perhaps best known for improv comedy show Whose Line is it Anyway?) both writes and stars as Moore in the play, working backwards from the grim find to imagine how the mentally ill American met his fate.

It opens with Moore in Kansas discussing a complex “protocol” of drugs with his doctor (played by Suki Webster who gamely takes on multiple roles). Carrying a shopping bag with the Queen’s face emblazoned across it and sporting a homemade badge of the monarch he cuts a comic figure, unconvincingly insisting he has his condition under control.

A stressful day at work causes his fragile sanity to slip. He leaves his job as a manager in a car hire business, hits the bottle and flies to London to follow his imagined destiny: to usurp the Duke of Edinburgh and take up his rightful place at the side of Elizabeth II. Setting himself up in a hotel overlooking Buckingham Palace he meets a homeless girl and a prostitute, who each play a role in guiding him on his “pilgrimage.”

As an examination of mental illness it’s a little shallow, and some of the humour seems incongruous with the central plot, particularly the emotive ending. That Mon Droit—part of the Royal Family’s motto, literally meaning “my right”— is successful as a piece of entertainment is testament to the two actors who both give fine, committed performances.