The plan was to travel down to London early, visit some of the sites and enjoy some retail therapy before the play. Not matter how many times I go to the London there is still new experiences and regular tourist spots are never boring. This times new experience was living like a celebrity - our hotel on Shaftesbury Avenue (15 seconds away from the theatre Google said) was overbooked and they moved us to the very stylish five star hotel near Marble Arch and Hyde Park – the Mont Calm. I can’t blame our original hotel staff, they said it was a computer glitch, and they upgraded us and paid for all our taxis. I think I saw more of London this weekend than ever before as I was travelling along the roads in people carriers with blacked out window instead of the miserable Tube. The Mont Calm staff were very pleasant and helpful and even managed to not laugh when we handed over our tatty supermarket ‘Bags for Life’ when checking in.
I had questions before the play. History and Politics aren’t
my favourite things would this play keep me interested? Will the woman from Dead the Dead Donkey play
Maggie Thatcher well? Will my Thatcherite Mother approval? Will my Thatcherite
Mother heckle Blair? Luckily there was no Blair but a lot of funny one-liners
at his expense thou, and what does one wear when mixing with the Lovies? This
was no average theatre trip to watch a touring Musical in Boredville – this was
Dame Helen! But my money was as good as
any other Lovie (£76 for a stalls ticket and £14 for three drinks at the theatre
bar) so my best jeans would have to do.
This play was actually a 2 ½ hour witty history lesson of two
people gossiping, it just so happened these two characters was a Head of State
played by a massive Movie Star and a Prime Minister played by ‘I know that face
from somewhere’ said the TV addict. I’m still on the right side of 40 so any Prime
Minister pre -Thatcher I had to ask my Mom who they were apart from Winston
Churchill (Robert Hardy) of course. John
Major (Paul Ritter) actually looked like John ‘Normal’ Major. The only PM to
receive applause before speaking was Margaret Thatcher (Haydn Gwynne) as she
stomped on stage. I actually felt sorry for Gordon Brown (Nathaniel Parker) as
his tried to dig himself out of the big hole his predecessor dug for him, jokes
about Mr and Mrs Blair raised a laugh, and I feel I was in the middle of a
Conservative Party Conference until David Cameron (Rufus Wright) and his fake
tan came on. I could imagine him sending the Queen to sleep in real life. Yes
‘The Queen’ has the best lines closely followed by Harold Wilson (Richard
McCable) who rumour as it was Her Majesty favourite PM with his straight
talking and northern humour and I would agree with that option – in Theatre
World, as real PMs aren’t interesting or funny.
Scenes where the Queen is talking to her younger self showed
her human side and scenes with the PMs showed her humour and that her duty mean
she would always support the Government (even if she didn’t agree with certain
decisions). This script and Helen Mirren
also showed that not only is Her Majesty the Head of State, she is also a part
time unpaid therapist.
The next time I will probably see Queen Helen will be more Orange
Wednesday (EE Wednesday doesn’t sound right) instead of Five Star Saturday.
