It’s 1979 and the UK has just elected its first female Prime Minister. It’s also a time of social and political change at home and abroad. As always, the new PM has weekly audiences with the monarch. Those meetings are absolutely confidential, a private exchange between the two most powerful people in the country. Such is the premise of Handbagged.
Moira Buffini’s insightful comedy takes us behind those closed Palace doors and imagines what may have been. First written in 2010 as a one-act play, the full version premiered back in 2013 and has been a popular theatre production ever since. It has now been reimagined with the addition of new music composed for the show, a little a cappella singing, and some remixed pop classics of the time, in a co-production between Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch and the National Theatre.
With the play opening to a simple round set, painted gold to reflect the giant coin bearing the Queen’s likeness hanging overhead, we know immediately that this is a comedy-drama featuring handbags, hairspray and sensible shoes. Mrs Thatcher immediately dips into her famously deep curtsy and so the vital but tense relationship begins.
The Queen asks her to sit; Mrs Thatcher refuses in a simple but effective power play that conveys ‘I’m here to work’. There are lots of character hints through words and actions. “To say ‘no’ is courage,” insists the PM. “She was my eighth,” observes the Queen, wryly asserting her superiority. There’s humour within the humour too, when the Queen says to the audience “I enjoy the interval – sometimes it’s the best bit of the play”.
Rather curiously, there are two Queens and two Mrs Thatchers in the play, each portraying a younger and older version of themselves. This actually works very well, especially as the two women were only a few months apart in age, but worlds away in life experience. And those differences continued to frame their relationship throughout Mrs Thatcher’s 11 years at Number 10. The play takes in all the key issues of the time – the Falklands War, the miners’ strike, the Brixton riots – along with their personal challenges. This really was a decade that still informs so much of life in the UK today.
The ensemble acting here is excellent. The four actors who play the key roles – Emma Ernest and Morag Cross as Mrs Thatcher; Helen Reuben and Sarah Moyle as the Queen – are strongly supported by Tiajna Amayo, Cassius Konneh, Gerard McDermott and Jane Quinn, who each play multiple roles from footmen and foreign dignitaries to the Reagans and, of course, Denis Thatcher.
Read: Theatre review: The Years, Harold Pinter Theatre
Handbagged is great a night at the theatre and Buffini’s clever script may be closer to the truth than we know.
Handbagged
Queen’s Theatre Hornchuch
Writer: Moira Buffini
Director: Alex Thorpe
Assistant Director: Chani Merrell
Designer: Katie Lias
Lighting Designer: Ryan Day
Musical Director and Arranger: Kate Marlais
Sound Designer: Owen Crouch
Movement Director: Jonnie Riordan
Costume Supervisor: Chantal Short
Casting Director: Chloe Blake
Wig Supervisor: Debbie Storey
ASM: Sofie Mirza
Design Assistant: Victoria Mayton
Head of Wigs and Wardrobe: Kira Tisbury
Sound No 1: Lizzy Stewart
DSM: Lizzie Bond
Accent Coach: Danièle Lydon
Production Manager: James Dawson
Cast: Tiajna Amayo, Morag Cross, Emma Ernest, Cassius Konneh, Gerard McDermott, Sarah Moyle, Jane Quinn, Helen Reuben
Handbagged will be performed until 22 February 2025, then touring nationally to 24 May.
