Oh, Nell, you deserved better! ‘Nell Gwynn’ is a disappointing new play at the Folger.

“Nell Gwynn,” the stylistic hodgepodge of an offering at Folger Theatre, represents what you might call the comedy of hope — the hope being that the next scene will be funnier than the one just completed.

But no, Jessica Swale’s long, thin play about one of the first actresses to trod the London boards after King Charles II reopened the theaters in the mid-1600s never quite scales the summit of giddy pleasure it so energetically strives for.