Handbagged

Handbagged is a play by the British playwright Moira Buffini, examining the relationship between Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Margaret Thatcher. It originated in 2010 as a one act play, with the younger Mrs Thatcher played by Claire Cox and the elder by Stella Gonet, as part of the Tricycle Theatre's Women, Power and Politics festival.

In 2013, Buffini expanded the play into one of full length. Both Buffini and Indhu Rubasingham, the artistic director at the Tricycle, were nervous about the idea of an extended version, because at the time, another play covering the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and Mrs Thatcher - Peter Morgan's The Audience was about to open. However, Rubasingham was confident that the two plays would be different enough for there not to be a problem.

The extended version premiered in October 2013 at the Tricycle, - Gonet reprised her role as the elder Thatcher, with the younger version played by Fenella Woolgar and the elder and younger versions of Elizabeth II played by Marion Bailey and Clare Holman respectively. The play received positive reviews, with one commentator describing it as 'very funny...if occasionally overstretched', and that the play had a 'buoyant, meta-theatrical playfulness' due to its repeated breaking of the fourth wall.

In April 2014 the play transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End, due to run until August 2014. The cast of this production was:

The play toured the UK from September to December 2015 starring Susie Blake and Kate Fahy, with the younger queen portrayed by Emma Handy. It visited Canterbury, Salford, Guildford, Oxford, Coventry, Cambridge, Nottingham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Edinburgh, Norwich, Cheltenham,Richmond, Cambridge and Bath.

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