Handbagged

Following the sold-out 2013 season and subsequent West End and New York runs The Queen and the Iron Lady are reunited once again on the Kiln stage.

The monarch. Her most powerful subject. Born six months apart, each had a destiny that would change the world. But when the stiff upper lip softened and the gloves came off, which one had the upper hand?

Indhu Rubasingham directs Moira Buffini’s wickedly funny hit-comedy that imagines what the world’s most powerful women Margaret Thatcher and Her Majesty The Queen Elizabeth II, talked about behind closed palace doors.

__Access Performances __

Captioned Performance: 29 September, 7.30pm Audio Described Performance: 20 October, 7.30pm

Discover what happened between Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II behind closed doors in Handbagged at the Kiln Theatre. Book Handbagged tickets in London on TodayTix.

Margaret Thatcher served as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. During her 11-year tenure, the Conservative politician visited Queen Elizabeth II for weekly meetings. They smiled at one another in a considerate way, appeasing the other person. But as the gloves came off and they began to speak freely, who would take charge. Would it be the monarch? Or would the prime minister have the final punch?

Moira Buffini’s zingy political comedy examines the relationship between two of Britain’s most powerful women of all time.

Book Handbagged tickets in London on TodayTix.

What to Watch For:

• Handbagged premiered as a one-act play in 2010 as part of a Tricycle Theatre festival. Three years later, the full play opened at the same venue. Not long after, Handbagged headed to the West End, taking residency at the Vaudeville Theatre, a few hundred metres away from Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace!
• Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II were born six months apart from each other. Their childhoods were in different worlds though: one grew up in the north of England while the other was on a path to becoming the country’s longest-reigning monarch.
• Why the name Handbagged? Buffini named her political comedy after Thatcher’s constant handbag carrying.
• Some of the original Handbagged London cast return for the 2022 revival: Marion Bailey plays an older Queen Elizabeth II, and Kate Fahy plays an older Margaret Thatcher.