Moira Buffini’s Handbagged has never felt more relevant, or more riotously entertaining, than in this sharp and spirited revival.

Directed with flair by Alex Thorpe, the production places us in the imagined privacy of weekly audiences between Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher. You get to witness two of Britain’s most formidable women sparing, squabbling, and (occasionally) finding something resembling common ground, and it’s an absolute riot.

Handbagged finds new energy in a Britain still grappling with the legacy of both its monarchy and Thatcherism. What results is not just a clever political satire and a thoughtful exploration of power, class, femininity, and the burden of legacy.

The play cleverly divides both women into two: older and younger versions who sometimes bicker with, contradict, or cringe at each other. The device is more than just theatrical fun; it allows Buffini’s script to interrogate memory, memoir-style monologues, and the unreliability of both.

Did they ever really clash so directly?

Did Thatcher dare to lecture the Queen, or vice versa?

It doesn’t matter. The fiction feels emotionally, historically true.

The brilliance of this structure is in how it plays against the traditionally male-dominated lens of British history. These are women with real power, not wives or mistresses or side characters, Buffini inviting us to revel in the complexities of that power dynamic. Watching these two institutions in conversation (and sometimes in combat) feels like being granted access to the state’s secret engine room.

Sarah Moyle’s Queen (Q) is a gleaming performance of wit and control. She has an impish, twinkling presence, delivering deadpan lines with the precision of a surgeon. Her Queen exudes an image of unflappable optimism even when the world — or Thatcher — seems to be burning down around her. She smiles serenely while delivering exquisite barbs.

Morag Cross’s T (older Thatcher) meets her with iron will. She’s superb — never descending into caricature, even when the handbag metaphor is at its heaviest. Cross walks a tightrope, portraying a woman convinced of her righteousness, yet haunted by it.

Meanwhile, Helen Reuben (Liz) and Emma Ernest (Mags), as their younger selves, add volatility and dynamism. Reuben brings a clipped clarity and hidden steel to young Elizabeth, while Ernest’s Thatcher is power in the making — fervent, impassioned, sometimes oblivious. The moments when Mags and Liz visibly recoil at their older selves, or try to correct them, are among the play’s best.

Then there’s the heart of the show: the two men who play everyone else. Cassius Konneh and Dennis Herdman are an absolute joy, shifting accents, genders, and emotional registers with ease.

Konneh is heartbreaking when sneaking in an opinion and an absolute power house as Nancy Reagan (yes, you read that correctly - and dare I say it, dashing in red), particularly when he tries to voice an opinion of his own and is met with silence. The stillness as he stood centre-stage when trying to hold Thatcher’s actions accountable — in a show defined by brisk, busy theatricality — was quietly devastating.

Herdman, meanwhile, gives a particularly humorous turn as Denis Thatcher and Michael Heseltine and many, many others. A moment where he describes the suffering of the miners’ families is especially powerful — a rare crack in the humour, a reminder of real pain in the policy decisions.

The joy of watching these two men recite Neil Kinnock’s “I warn you” speech with all the enthusiasm and giddy excitement of a teenager screaming “It’s Britney, bitch!” is pure theatrical gold.

Katie Lias’s design is sleek and smart, allowing the characters to slip between roles and decades without fuss. It’s suggestive rather than literal — palatial without being grand, political without being drab. Ryan Day’s lighting supports this beautifully, moving us from media-frenzied stagecraft to intimate moments with a graceful fluidity.

The sound design by Owen Crouch and music from Kate Marlais gives a fresh, contemporary fizz; in essence, it’s like the Spice Girls showing up to sing you a newsreel. Who doesn’t want that?

What makes this production really sing is Thorpe’s ability to pitch it just right: Handbagged is very, very funny — but never silly. It’s witty, but never smug. It’s a triumph of ensemble performance, but also of direction that respects the script’s playfulness without losing its gravity.

More than anything, it invites us to witness the collisions of two kinds of belief: tradition vs. conviction, ceremonial neutrality vs. aggressive reform. The Queen holds the line with poise and charm; Thatcher charges forward with righteousness and rhetoric. Neither fully wins. Both lose something.

It’s theatre that doesn’t just teach history — it vivifies it. You learn, yes, but you also feel. This isn’t a schoolroom; it’s a stage alive with debate, with memory, with real people underneath the symbols.

In the end, Handbagged feels like the most delightful kind of history lesson — the one that knows it’s for grown-ups, the one that laughs at itself as much as it lectures. This is sharp, intelligent, gloriously theatrical work, brought to life by a crack creative team and a pitch-perfect cast. It may be about the past, but in its questions about leadership, legacy, and public service, it speaks powerfully to the present.

We may never know exactly what was said behind closed doors, but if it was half as funny, half as furious, and half as fabulous as Handbagged, we’ve all missed out.

Catch it at The Oxford Playhouse until Saturday, 24th May — it’s your last chance to eavesdrop on history before the curtain falls and the handbags are finally hung up.

A few years ago, the National Theatre produced a play called The Audience, written by Peter Morgan and starring Helen Mirren as the Queen, which covered the Queen’s weekly meetings with her (then 12) Prime Ministers. It was very clear in that production that Margaret Thatcher, played by Haydn Gwynne, was her least favourite PM. How would the relationship be portrayed in Moira Buffini’s extremely cleverly crafted play, Handbagged?

This production looks at the relationship in a very different way using comedy, though also using words spoken by both the Queen and Thatcher on various occasions. And yes, there is no chemistry between the two of them, though they both have to endure these meetings every week for 11 years. Each person is played in two incarnations: 'Mags and Liz', or Thatcher and the Queen at the time of Thatcher’s premiership; and 'T and Q', or Thatcher and the Queen much later, looking back at what happened. All four characters are on stage all the time, commenting on events – and often denying things that were supposed to have been said; “I never said that” is a common refrain, sometimes followed by “Yes you did.” We don’t know what was said at these meetings, of course, but certainly some disagreements are well known: Thatcher didn’t want the Queen to go to the Commonwealth conference in Lusaka, but she went; the Queen wanted sanctions imposed on apartheid South Africa as did the rest of the Commonwealth, which happened in the teeth of opposition from Thatcher.

Thatcher wants to tell the story of her time in office with her favourite aspects such as winning the Falklands War. However, there are two male actors on stage who, while playing several different parts, are also there to be the voice of truth, pointing out that not all things were good – the miners’ strike; the widening of the poverty gap and so on. The two Thatchers try to stop him (“That’s not in your script”) in vain. The men also come on to explain what was going on to the audience, some of whom might be too young to have lived through Thatcher’s time in office. The inconsistencies on both sides are highlighted: the Queen worries about the poor – but then she doesn’t pay any tax; Thatcher’s language becomes more regal which she denies – until she says, “We are a grandmother.”

This all sounds very serious, and some of it is of course, because Britain was a different country after Thatcher. But it is also riotously funny in parts: all four women muddling up their handbags, Thatcher skipping irritably over an invisible corgi, and the over-the-top portrayal of Lord Michael Heseltine are just a few examples. All the acting is outstanding, with Morag Cross and Emma Ernest as T and Mags have Thatcher’s voice and mannerisms down to a T (sorry about that), whilst Sarah Moyle and Helen Reuben as Q and Liz are equally convincing. Cassius Konneh has to cover a wide range of parts: the Queen’s secretary, Kenneth Kaunda, Neil Kinnock and even Nancy Reagan to name a few. Dennis Herdman meanwhile has to take on the flamboyant Heseltine as well as the wet sheep Howe; Ronald Reagan, Arthur Scargill and a racist Denis Thatcher. Sometimes they are just arguing about who should play which parts, but there are powerful moments too, such as when both men recite Neil Kinnock’s “I warn you” speech before Thatcher’s re-election. Everyone breaks into song several times: the reason for this is not always clear nor are the words, but some of the songs are recognisable from the period. The set is simple a raised platform onto which chairs are brought and removed and a huge coin with the Queen’s head in the background. No more is needed.

This is an outstanding play which reminds us of the Thatcher era through humour. Do go – and don’t forget to be upstanding for the Queen when you are called on to do so.