Moira Buffini's witty and confident conjectural take on the weekly meetings between the Queen and Margaret Thatcher during the 11 years of the latter's premiership was outstanding when it opened at the Tricycle last autumn. Now, given room to breathe in a bigger West End theatre, it's even more cherishable.
In a wonderfully playful conceit, Buffini provides a pair of actresses, one older and one younger, to portray each of these two very different women of exactly the same age, who found themselves thrown together by the quirks of democracy and hereditary monarchy. These two “selves” interact with and contradict each other and, delightfully, all four versions often turn out to be unreliable narrators, in Indhu Rubasingham’s notably accomplished production.
Q and T, or Liz and Mags, clash particularly over the Thatcher government’s refusal of sanctions against apartheid-era South Africa. The two stand-out turns come from Marion Bailey as the older Queen, determinedly enjoying a spot of mischief after a lifetime of non-committal silence, and a pitch-perfect Fenella Woolgar, in full command of Thatcher’s infuriatingly imperious eye blink.
Buffini also enjoys considerable self-referential fun with the very idea of this being a play. Q and T argue about whether the piece should have an interval; T, naturally, is all for batting on doggedly without a break.
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