‘The audience want to connect with her’: portraying the Queen after her death

The Kiln theatre’s Handbagged, about the monarch’s meetings with Margaret Thatcher, has opened in a week of mourning. Its stars reflect on the play’s humour and their tears in rehearsal

They all wondered, says actor Marion Bailey, “can we do this play now?” Handbagged was due to begin previews at London’s Kiln theatre last Friday, then news broke of the Queen’s death. That performance was cancelled but the cast took to the stage on Saturday with some trepidation. How would audiences react to a play about the Queen’s meetings with Margaret Thatcher (and less than a week since the real monarch had met another female Conservative prime minister)?

“We were sort of prepared for anything,” says Bailey, who plays the older version of two Queen Elizabeths (reprising her role from the original 2013 production). On stage, they held a minute’s silence and director Indhu Rubasingham gave a speech. “But the audience seemed to be up for it immediately,” says Bailey. “They wanted to laugh. They wanted to, on some level, celebrate the Queen.”