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Lampoons of royalty have a long tradition in Great Britain, but in a new play at the National Theater, Queen Elizabeth II is portrayed with great realism, an extraordinary change from the past. Buckingham Palace reports no precedent for the queen’s role in Alan Bennett’s “A Question of Attribution,” half of a two-play evening collectively called “Single Spies.” She is shown in a private, off-guard conversation with a member of her official household who is secretly a Soviet spy, a circumstance based on fact. The illusion created by actress Prunella Scales (who plays Sybil Fawlty in television’s “Fawlty Towers”) as the queen is so perfect--a portrait in miniature--that it brings an almost audible gasp when she appears. Buckingham Palace will not say whether the queen was consulted about her role.
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