Hangbagged director Hannah Tyrrell-Pinder working with cast member Simon Darwen. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
THEY met once a week for 11 years. One believed there was no such thing as society. The other committed her life to serving it.
On stage at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, from tonight until August 29, Moira Buffini’s comedy Handbagged imagines what happened behind closed palace doors when two of the world’s most powerful women, Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, clashed.
Spanning 1979 to 1990, this Olivier Award-winning 2014 play asks if HM The Queen and her PM, the Iron Lady, ever found common ground or did their stiff upper lips reign supreme?
The SJT revival is in the hands of director Hannah Tyrrell-Pinder, whose later father, Andrew Pinder, served as the UK’s e-Envoy from 2000 to 2004 under Prime Minister Tony Blair, receiving his CBE from The Queen in 2004.
“He was going to turn it down because of his working-class Yorkshire roots [he was born in Sheffield] and being a dyed-in-the-wool Labour voter – we grew up never watching The Queen’s Christmas message on TV – but everyone else talked him into it because I wanted to go to Buckingham Palace!” recalls Hannah.
“We just got to stand at the back while Dad got his honour from The Queen, with a proper handshake and a bow, but I do remember us being driven through the palace gates, having our photos taken like we were important.”
Hannah has now come into rather closer contact with The Queen, at least theatrically, in being at the helm of Handbagged, with its two versions of Elizabeth II, Meriel Scholfield’s Q, the older monarch, and Liz Garland’s Liz, her younger self, playing opposite Alexandra Mathie’s T and Pandora Clifford’s Mags.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to be directingHandbagged at the SJT this summer, working with this brilliant company of actors to bring to life some of the most prominent figures from recent history,” says Hannah.
Pandora Clifford, left, and Alexandra Mathie in the SJT rehearsal room. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
“Presenting Handbagged in the Round is so exciting, engaging in an immediate dialogue with our audience, and bringing them face to face with two of the most powerful women of the 20th century.”
Hannah knew SJT artistic director Paul Robinson in his time in the same post at Theatre503, when she was first starting out as Box Of Tricks’ joint artistic director and co-founder, and had worked with Amy Fisher, now the SJT’s head of producing, at Box Of Tricks (where Amy is a board member).
After talking to Paul about freelance work, he came back with the suggestion of Hannah directing Handbagged in the summer season and liked her ideas on how to stage it. Amy was a useful source too on how to make a play speak to the SJT audience, one steeped in the comedies of Sir Alan Ayckbourn since 1959.
“They’re a lovely audience, where they’re so invested in having a good time and care so much about their theatre and want to have pride in it,” says Hannah.
Ayckbourn’s 92nd play, The Trial Of Romeo Oscar, a futuristic drama exploring what it means to be human in 2194, will open six days after Handbagged concludes its look-back at the recent past.
“I’m surprised that we’ve not seen more versions of Margaret Thatcher on stage because she’s such a fascinating character, and even though The Queen has left us too, we are still caught up in how she represented us,” says Hannah. “Margaret Thatcher had a similar impact on our psyche: for some people, she was the utmost villain; for others, she was a real inspiration.”
Analysing Handbagged’s theatrical style, Hannah says: “The show is very interesting because it is so meta-theatrical and theatrically literate, dipping into the notion of storytelling and the art of telling the truth. They [The Queens and PM] may say ‘I’m not a fan of theatre’, but they both enjoyed theatre, they both loved music and went to musical theatre, and they understood the value of art, so there’s a lot to learn about them that way.
“I don’t think they would have been unhappy about being the subject of a play when language was so important to both of them, given how much they had to communicate with words, and with the gaps in between; the nuances that go with that, when there’s so much in between the lines.”
Liz Garland, left, and Meriel Scholfield in rehearsal for the Stephen Joseph Theatre production of Handbagged. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
In the distinction between politician and monarch, Mrs T could be frank, where The Queen could not. “You can’t fault Margaret Thatcher for her force of vision, when she could have been more collaborative. You don’t have that force now, when politicians try to prevaricate about a subject, where you can’t be certain about what they think,” says Hannah.
“For The Queen, it was a hard role because she repressed so much and had to be in control of what she said.”
Margaret Thatcher’s 1993 book, The Downing Street Years, all 900-plus pages of it, was invaluable to constructing her character in Handbagged. “Whereas The Queen is a much trickier proposition, where we want to know what she was like behind her public appearances, what she was like behind closed doors, because people were so loyal to her, so it’s difficult to get a sense of that voice,” says Hannah,
“But there’s something enjoyable about knowing you can never have the ‘true’ voice but you can bring playfulness and irreverence to it. As a piece of theatre, Handbagged enters a contract with the audience where we suspend disbelief and you’re given licence to say it’s as much about interpretation as it is about what you’re seeing, and with these two women that’s even more enjoyable.”
Hannah grew up in a “very anti-Thatcher household, and not fans of the Royal Family either”, but in working on Handbagged, she has developed “respect for just how much Margaret Thatcher had to deal with the patriarchy – respect for both of them, in fact.”
“It was so much more difficult for them than if they had been men, particularly for Margaret Thatcher, living in a strict religious community, going to church four times on Sundays, as the daughter of a Methodist lay preacher,” she says.
“She had this sharp, sparky brain that she couldn’t use at first, but she kept fighting to use it, and you have to have respect for that, just as I developed an admiration for Denis Thatcher, how they really supported each other in a loving relationship and were an example of a loving marriage that worked. That’s been a realisation for me.”
Handbagged runs at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tonight until August 29. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.