Handbagged: if this is what luvvies think being ‘fair’ to Thatcher is, I’d like to see their idea of ‘unfair’

Why do the Left love the Queen? Sure, most of us agree she’s done an excellent job in a difficult role, only screwing up a few major life decisions: tricksy choice of husband, wintry education of her children, fastidious attitude to peanuts. But as one of the country’s richest women, a symbol of economic equality she ain’t.  So it’s a mark of just how willfully hostile theatreland is to Margaret Thatcher that in Moira Buffini’s new play about the two, Handbagged, it’s the Queen, not the grocer’s daughter, who emerges as the courageous voice of social justice. It’s a frustrating blindspot in an otherwise witty, watchable production, anchored by consummate performances from Marion Bailey and Fenella Woolgar.

Buffini has a sinuous grasp of the problems and possibilities of staging history – in a canny move, Maggie and the Queen are each played by two actresses simultaneously, allowing each to question her own memory and motives in dialogue with herself rather than potentially interminable soliloquy.