The Anastasia File
Theatre Royal Windsor
Until Saturday 3rd October 2026
In July, 1918, Tsar Nicholas II and his young family are brutally executed by the Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg. Two years later in Berlin, a young woman is pulled from a canal following a failed suicide attempt and brought to a psychiatric hospital. As doctors and the police puzzle over her identity, she slowly begins to reveal details about her past that lead those who attend her to believe that she may in fact be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the heir to the Romanov fortune.
Over the following years she begins to tell the extraordinary account of her feigned death and escape from her family’s assassins. Her story receives public attention and soon the world is gripped by the appearance of the mysterious Mrs Manahan and her fantastical claims. But is everything she claims real? Or do her delusions run so deep that even she cannot tell the difference between what is fact and what is fiction?
Royce Ryton’s intriguing and emotional drama is inspired by the extraordinary story of Anne Manahan, whose thirty-years battle for recognition as the last surviving Romanov was one of the most popular historical mysteries of the twentieth century.
The Anastasia File was last produced at the Theatre Royal Windsor in 2025 and returns with the same cast but in a slightly re-worked version which I think makes it much better than before.
Jenny Seagrove stars as the mystery woman who claims to be Anastasia giving a beautiful nuanced and compelling performance that is probably one of the finest of her career. At first we are intrigued by the young girl (the character ages from 18 to 80 during the course of the play), and then as she reveals more facts (or lies?) about herself we get carried along in the belief that she is who she claims to be. But is she? Is she really the last surviving Romanov or just a very good actress and fraudster?
She is ably supported by Simon Shepherd who plays the dual-role of a father and son police inspector investigating the astonishing claim.
Praise must also go to Rosie Thomson who plays many characters from the nurse who first takes pity on the 18-year-old girl to Anastasia’s aunt who is called upon to identify her would-be niece and many others and also to Ashley D. Gayle who similarly plays multi-parts and each one very different from the others.
Roy Marsden’s direction keeps the play moving along at a good pace and the action, drama and intrigue never drops.
Memory, fact and fiction intertwine in this thrilling and moving play that keeps the audience guessing until the curtain falls and will keep you wondering just what was the truth long after you have left the theatre.
Reviewer: Mike Linane
⭐⭐⭐⭐