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Liz Hoggard's rating
, Turn to Her Naked Skin
By
Liz Hoggard
25 Jul 2008
You wait years for a play about feminism, and then two come along at once. May I suggest you give Joanna Murray Smith's shrill comedy, The Female of the Species, a miss, and go to Rebecca Lenkiewicz's new play about the suffragettes at the National instead.
Commissioned to mark 90 years since women first won the right to vote, Her Naked Skin is set in 1913 at the height of the suffragette movement. Astonishingly, it is the first original new play by a woman writer to be staged in the Olivier. Half of all tickets will be just £10 (courtesy of the Travelex Season) to pull in that crucial GCSE audience.
Her Naked Skin promises real epic sweep, taking us from Holloway Prison to riots in Hyde Park. The scenes of force-feeding endured by the suffragettes are designed to echo the intensity of torture at Abu Ghraib. Women's bodies, through the ages, have been so much more used and abused than men's, Lenkiewicz reminds us.
But the play will not just be a history lesson. From the script, Her Naked Skin is funny and shocking and also very erotic. Lenkiewicz uses a (fictional) affair between two female campaigners, the married Lady Celia Cann (Lesley Manville) and a seamstress, Eve Douglas (Jemima Rooper) to tell a story of militant struggle. At first it seems that Lady Celia is the passive victim in a loveless marriage but gradually we see she is quite a sexual predator. The frank sex scenes, between a fiftysomething aristocrat and a twentysomething working girl, will be tough to pull off in the huge auditorium of the Olivier.
The play strives to be evenhanded. Some men - like Lady Celia's husband - supported female suffrage, even though it brought them ridicule from their peers. And the women themselves can be snobbish. Class is still the elephant in the room.
The excitement around Lenkiewicz, who originally trained as an actress, is palpable. Her first play, Soho: A Tale of Table Dancers, was inspired by her own experience of working as a pole dancer.
The Night Season, about three generations of a dysfunctional Irish family, won her the Critics' Circle Most Promising Playwright Award 2004; Shoreditch Madonna was a candid look at the Hoxton art world (her brother works in the art business).
With Her Naked Skin she says she wanted to celebrate a " forgotten" movement, whose members suf fered so much but displayed comradeship, strength and old-fashioned pluck. The last time I saw suffragettism treated as dramatic subject matter was on Upstairs Downstairs in the early Seventies. Thirty years is too long to wait.
Her Naked Skin is previewing now at the Olivier, and will run in rep until 24 September. Information: 020 7452 3000; www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Reader views (6)
Very disappointing. So slow and made even slower by the endless (often pointless) scene changes. Only the character of Florence rang true. A poor script which did not do justice to either the politics or the personal in what should have been riveting. It was just one clunking, cliche after another. Lesley Manville worked hard to try and bring Lady C to life, but to no avail. I just did not care about these people, so the horrific treatment made no real impact. A wasted opportunity.
- Chris, London, 04/08/2008 15:20
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Was ok - first half much better then second half, some great performances by the husband and the older lady who led the movement. However, didn't think the lesbian story line added anything to it, seemed rather like something that was done to grab headline attention not for the play.
Would have been much more interesting to focus on the struggle and historical events rather than a limp love story taking up some of the time. set was great and beautiful but moved around a little to often.
- Ab, london uk, 04/08/2008 14:57
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This play showed the National's characteristically high production values: excellent performances, set, music, costumes etc. But the play itself is a muddle and is very poorly written. In 1913 people did not speak in the way that these characters did. The dialogue was clunky, clicheed and sounded as if it was set in 2008. A disappointment...
- Frances Bulwer, London UK, 04/08/2008 10:09
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First half interesting in spots, second half absolute dross - I pitied the cast having to deal with such substandard material. Poorly written, some absolute howlers (how did people in 1913 know there was going to be an Elizabeth the second?). Great set - but I go to the theatre to see great acting of great plays. Dire
- Freud1970, Southampton, UK, 01/08/2008 00:19
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Too much kissing and not enough cunnilingus (in fact, none) but otherwise perfectly splendid.
- Womenonwomen, Lahore, Pakistan, 31/07/2008 15:20
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Outstanding production. Jemima Rooper, Lesley Manville and the rest of the cast are simply terrific in this powerful play.
- Se, London, London, UK, 27/07/2008 10:41
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