I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting the first musical number. Seeing two Queens and two Margaret Thatchers singing Mr Blue Sky was disorienting. But it turned out to be a necessary jolt to settle into the meta, chaotic, and deeply fun world of Handbagged.

And yes, two Queens and two Margaret Thatchers is right. Playwright Moira Buffini takes us on a whirlwind tour of the Thatcher years, viewed through the lens of her meetings with the monarch. Helen Reuben (Liz) and Emma Ernest (Mags) play the two characters for most of the play, but their older counterparts Q (Sarah Moyle) and T (Morag Cross) are always on stage with them. It’s a neat move by Buffini – one woman from each pair presents a more historical narrative of the meetings, while the other, using the simple two-step staging to distance themselves, fills in the personal side. The interactions between the Queens and Maggies are a delight, with some excellent accent work on display by all four actors. They allow us to see inside the women’s self-perceptions (as Buffini sees them of course), with Cross constantly defending her past self’s standoffishness as a sign of respect. Moyle’s Q seems rather unimpressed with those protestations, however.

Cassius Konneh (in his first professional role) and Dennis Herdman, meanwhile, have a riot as Konneh plays (deep breath): a Buckingham Palace servant; Kenneth Kaunda; Nancy Reagan; Michael Shea (the Queen’s Press Secretary); and Neil Kinnock, and Herdman fills in the roles of: Denis Thatcher; Peter Carington (former Foreign Secretary); Ronald Reagan; Rupert Murdoch; Arthur Scargill; Michael Heseltine; Geoffrey Howe; and Neil Kinnock again! I’ve almost definitely missed someone in that dizzying list, and it’s a credit to the pair how well they handle the blur of characters. Each has a distinct accent, wholly different mannerisms, and wardrobe subtleties, like the untucked shirt that instantly creates Murdoch’s somewhat portlier frame.

Handbagged’s humour is sharp, and alive: Thatcher and the Queen tussle over who gets to turn on the lights at the play’s beginning, setting the stage for a night full of meta humour. One especially memorable moment is Sarah Moyle’s tour of my side of the audience at the end of the interval, during which Konneh bade us all be upstanding. Lines are delivered with an arch sense of their future meaning (Prince Andrew provides particularly fertile ground here), and the era’s key lines are all present and correct – although for younger audience members such as myself only a few (“we have become a grandmother”) landed with a real punch.

But that interplay between the act and the real also brings out the tensions in the narrative of the Thatcher years extraordinarily well. Konneh and Herdman are listed as Actor 1 and Actor 2, not only because a full list of their characters would be ridiculous (see above), but also because the pair step outside those roles. As Palace servant, Konneh provides the necessary background for the Queen’s 1979 trip to Zambia (now Zimbabwe), but he soon begins to offer more personal interventions. When Thatcher tries to skip over the ’81 Brixton riots, he is indignant, and makes sure we hear about the damage her policies are doing to the country. Herdman’s Actor 2 seems to learn from Konneh’s example, offering resistance to the Thatcher narrative over the miners’ strike in a genuinely tense moment where the audience was firmly on his side.

Excerpts from the Queen’s Christmas speeches, meanwhile, provide an indication of the growing rift between the two women. The play, though tagged with its fair share of ‘that didn’t happen’ interjections, builds a compelling picture of their fractious relationship. As the second act goes on, it turns increasingly to the personal. The 1986 Sunday Times headline ‘Queen dismayed by ‘uncaring’ Thatcher’ marks a particular moment of pause. Though both women are criticised, harshly (and rightly) at times, conversations like the one following that report are treated with respect. Indeed, the play refuses to indulge in simplistic reductions of the Queen and Prime Minister. Thatcher’s speech after the Brighton bombing is given all the gravitas it deserves; the Queen’s quietly caring politics come to the fore time and time again.

Handbagged is definitely a night of laughs (a lot of laughs). But its deft navigation of narrative power, of who gets to tell the story, and its nuanced portrayals of both Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher, ensure there’s much more to be gleaned. We are still in many ways living in the Britain these two women created, and Handbagged gives us a little more insight into the relationship that built it.


[Handbagged is running at the Oxford Playhouse Tues 20-Sat 24 May]