I returned home from a 10-day visit to Little Bwitain today, and write this as Rishi Sunak is sworn in as the youngest Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since the Acts of Union in 1800. Also the first British PM of Asian descent, Sunak replaces Liz Truss — a record breaker for all the wrong reasons as the shortest serving occupant of 10 Downing Street ever, at a mere seven weeks in office.
To put his youth into political context, Sunak becomes the first Prime Minister born after Margaret Thatcher came to power as the country’s first female First Lord of the Treasury in 1979. Talking of which…
Watch them all fall down…
If there is one continuum from the Thatcher era to the blink and you’ll miss them domino downfall of May, Johnson, Truss, [insert name of this week’s Prime Minister here] it’s that Tory MPs are utterly psychologically ruthless in dispatching their leaders if they think they’re in danger of losing their seats at the next election.
That they could commit matricide and ruthlessly turf out the longest serving PM of the 20th century is still the stuff of legend over three decades later, and which it feels increasingly like the party, and by default the country, is still paying the price.
The Crown even devoted an entire episode to the lady’s deposing, however Netflix fictionalised. Providing a brilliantly entertaining overview of the entire Thatcher premiership, Handbagged is a deliciously camp black comedy that is essentially all the Thatcher versus The Queen bits of The Crown’s fourth series marbled with the odd dash of The Iron Lady and The Audience but infused with its own brilliantly satirical script where you have two sets of MTs and ERs battling it out with each other and their older/younger selves as they reminisce and try to establish the truth of their time in power.
As a republican who has never voted Conservative it struck a chord more than it should have – a nostalgia for a simpler, more straightforward time when Britain was dominated by a pair of historic heavyweights just a few months apart in age but poles apart in approach, temperament and tenure.
They are, of course, arguably the two most famous, most formidable women of the 20th century, Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Hilda Thatcher.
While it has become de rigueur for pop queens like Donna Summer or Cher to be depicted onstage by three actors (such is their musical magnitude), the world’s actual longest-reigning queen only gets two: Marion Bailey plays Q, an older version of HM Betty, and Abigail Cruttenden plays Liz, the vigorous 53-year-old who encounters her 10th Prime Minister, and crucially, the first of her own gender.
Not to be outdone, the Iron Lady also gets two avatars: an older (wiser?) baroness named T (Kate Fahy), and Mags (Naomi Frederick), the free-market paladin who rides into Downing Street on a messianic crusade to reverse decline and make Britain great again.
A strong, determined leader or a tiresome tyrant? Britain’s first woman PM divided opinion like none before her. Love or hate her, Thatcher’s tumultuous trio of terms left an indelible mark on Britain at every level of society and on every political animal or head of state who was brave enough to cross her unilateral path. And the Queen, come to think of it, surely was no exception to the rule.
Following the monarch’s passing, opening a comedic show the very next day about her allegedly fraught relationship with Thatcher — which in parts suggests HM was rather (whisper it) simple-minded in her tastes may also have its knockers.*
I caught Moira Buffini’s sparky comedy at what was once my local art house: the Kiln Theatre on London’s Kilburn High Road on the evening of 17 October, just three days before Liz Truss — a Prime Minister who proudly if cynically styled herself on Thatcher — announced her humiliating resignation.
Handbagged explores just that blending hearsay, educated guesses and sheer imaginings of HM and PM’s private powwows as the ebb and flow of history swept the nation, and divided the two most powerful women in Britain; one destined to rule, the other elected to lead.
Buffini’s award-winning comedy speculates on those most provocative of questions: what did the world’s most powerful women really talk about behind closed doors in the seclusion of the palace? When the stiff upper lip softened and the gloves came off, which one had the upper hand?
And the answer is often not what we might suspect in this slow-burning showdown. As a young(er) Liz and Mags’ meetings unfold in front of us, their older, yet barely more mature, selves, Windsor and Thatcher watch on, interjecting with gusto, sharing hilarious insights into their frame of mind (they each confess to tuning out of the tedious chit chat during their very first official encounter) correcting facts and false impressions – and in many ways rewriting history.
As a quartet the leading ladies are a force to be reckoned with, deliciously belligerent, a tad frantic (particularly the Iron Lady), but never quite overstepping the mark – they show flawless comedic flair.
Bailey and Fahy particularly stand out as the older HM and PM and prove the true firecrackers of the production, with Fahy’s distinct mannerisms and haughty gait mirroring that of the Thatcher we remember.
Snapping at her heels is Romayne Andrews who seamlessly transforms on stage, playing an African leader, the Queen’s press secretary and in a hilarious race and gender-fluid turn, First Lady Nancy Reagan, in patent red stilettos and twin set. Andrews injects much-needed fun and frippery into the sombre scenes reflecting on Maggie’s tough dealings on the world stage while dodging the Brighton bomb and all manner of political opponents such as the pro-European Michael Heseltine and Kenneth Clarke.
Wonderfully engaging, cunningly observed and delightfully irreverent, Handbagged is an absorbing and thoroughly entertaining lesson in crafting clever comedy. Go see.
Steve Pafford
*The initial one-act run of Handbagged opened at the same Tricycle Theatre in 2013 and toured the UK on and off for several years; the years I was no longer a resident of Britain, in fact
