We’ve certainly had plenty of opportunities to revisit the Queen and Margaret Thatcher in recent years, what with the Queen and Iron Lady films and The Audience play. Accordingly, it took me a few minutes to settle in to the idea of someone other than Helen Mirren playing The Queen and Meryl Streep playing Lady T.

The conceit is interesting, as we have two actors each playing the younger and older Queen (Marion Bailey and Lucy Robinson) and Maggie (Stella Gonet and Fenella Woolgar) and two others playing literally everyone else (Neet Mohan and Jeff Rawle, who I remember fondly from Drop the Dead Donkey). Off the top of my head, they took on Denis Thatcher, Prince Philip, Neil Kinnock, Michael Heseltine, Arthur Scargill, Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Ken Clarke, Gerry Adams, Michael Shea, and many more I’ve forgotten. They also have a bit of banter “as actors” which is amusing.

The action takes place over Thatcher’s tenure in office, bookended by her visits to the Queen at the beginning and end of her time in office. The younger actors play them at the time, and the older actors offer reflections and observations. The fourth wall is broken constantly, which is a bit disconcerting at first, but you get used to it. I’m not sure whether it was makeup or not, but the older actors bore a much closer resemblance to their characters than did the younger ones. It did not much matter, though, as Fenella Woolgar, in particular, had Maggie’s voice and mannerisms down pat.

The play did not cover anything with which I was not already familiar, but it was interesting to revisit the period. Neet Mohan offers a young person’s point of view, at one point explaining that he had “wiki’d” a particular issue for us. He also acts as the voice of the opposition, bringing up unpleasant subjects, especially for Thatcher, such as the miners’ strike. The play is demonstrably in favour of the Queen’s supposed point of view, but I suppose that is only fair, since she was correct on issues such as the reunification of Germany and apartheid sanctions.

The acting was very good throughout, with particular praise for both Mohan and Jeff Rawle, who offered, amongst other things, a flawless Denis Thatcher and very good Neil Kinnock and Prince Philip. The American accents leaned rather too much towards the Texan for Ron and Nancy, but would have been very accurate for W, had he been around at the time. This continues until 2 August and is worth catching, as it is very funny at times.