Nell Gwynne/Malvern Theatres

THE king of England loved her… and long before the curtain comes down, we the audience have also fallen for her as well.

Nearly four centuries after the passing of Charles Stuart and his Hereford-born lover, it must have been quite a challenge for writer Jessica Swale to devise a storyline that would ring true.

Yet this is precisely what she’s done, because Laura Pitt-Pulford’s Nell is entirely believable as the actress who uses all her abundant charms and street cunning to win the heart of the most powerful man in the land.

This Restoration romp neatly captures the mood of post-Commonwealth England. Theatres that had been banned by Oliver Cromwell were not only reopened, but also allowed women to appear onstage by royal command.

Nell is encouraged to quit her day job selling oranges - and her night job selling other things - by Charles Hart (Sam Marks), a larger-than-life thespian who’s literally awash with swash and buckle.

He strides the boards like some kind of fourth musketeer, all floppy hair, sashes, shiny trousers and flashing smiles.

Speaking of which, he actually manages to keep his pants buttoned, which is more than you can say for the king (Ben Righton) who appears to have so many notches on the royal four-poster that it’s in danger of collapse.

Swale quite obviously has tremendous empathy with the times. It’s good riddance to dank and dark Puritanism and hello to bawdy ballads, gaudy togs, wenching and the devil-knows-what.

Ben Righton delivers a thoroughly plausible Charles, more concerned with his excursions in the bedroom rather than the incursions of the papist French in the Channel, while Esh Alladi is the fantastically camp Edward Kynaston, an actor who not only plays women’s parts but wears them as well.

And keeping the party moving along at its relentlessly cracking pace are the musicians, who under the flawless direction of Emily Baines, add extra flavour and texture to director Christopher Luscombe’s superlative sense of period.

Nell Gwynne runs until Saturday (March 18) and is the perfect breath of fresh, spring air to blow away all those winter cobwebs.

John Phillpott