HER NAKED SKIN. To 24 September.
London.
HER NAKED SKIN
by Rebecca Lenkiewicz.
Olivier Theatre South Bank SE1 9PX In rep to 24 Sept 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 20, 23, 30 Aug, 2, 24 Sept 2pm.
Runs 2hr 40mins with one interval.
Audio-described 22 Aug 22, 23 Aug 2pm.
Captioned 2 Sept 7.30pm.
Runs 2hr 40min One interval.
TICKETS 020 7452 3000.
www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/tickets
Review: Carole Woddis 13 August.
Big issue gets sidelined.
Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Her Naked Skin is the first play by a living female playwright on the Olivier stage since its inception. It should be a cause for celebration if only as a sign of parity and reflection of half the country’s population. Plays by women are still woefully rare, particularly at the National. Sadly therefore, as a woman, it pains me to have to declare myself something of a dissenter
.
Her Naked Skin certainly doesn’t want for ambition or serious subject – female suffrage. All too easy to forget that votes for women were introduced in this country only after the First World War. What a stirring piece then this might have turned out to be. Instead, by highlighting sexual self-discovery over political emancipation, the playwright does her cause no favours.
By focussing on upper middle class campaigner, Lady Celia Cain (Lesley Manville)’s journey towards domestic independence through her lesbian relationship with working-class suffragette, Eve Douglas (Jemima Rooper), Lenkiewicz achieves the remarkable feat of relegating female suffrage to a sideshow.
Not that the play is without resonance. There is a hideous scene of forced feeding – a common practice meted out to hunger-striking suffragettes – reminiscent of British action in Northern Ireland. Lenkiewicz’s decision to mate the upper-class Cain with working class Eve only to ditch her with disastrous consequences is also surely not accidental.
But Lenkiewicz is unable to pursue this or any intellectual through-line with sufficient weight. Even granted the feminist adage that the `personal is political’ and that Lenkiewicz fleetingly alludes to the appalling male attitudes within Westminster, the play founders in Celia’s sexual confusions. (Sarah Daniels’s 1983 The Devil’s Gateway handles female politicisation better.)
Howard Davies’ atmospheric production dominated by Rob Howell’s enormous prison-grill design is suitably doom-laden though its sheer gigantism destroys the emergence of any real feeling or tenderness that might have allowed the play to take wing in a smaller space.
Fine work by Manville, newcomer Rooper, Adrian Rawlins as Celia’s concerned but exasperated husband, William and Susan Engel towering as battle-scarred elder suffragette Florence Boorman, can’t disguise the disappointment many may feel at an opportunity lost.
Celia Cain: Lesley Manville.
William Cain: Adrian Rawlins.
Eve Douglas: Jemima Rooper.
Florence Boorman: Susan Engel.
Mrs Schliefke: Pamela Merrick.
Emily Wilding Davison: Zoë Aldrich.
Herbert Asquith: David Beames.
Miss Brint: Harriette Quarrie.
John Seely/Hunt: Julien Ball.
Augustine Birrell/Doctor Klein: Ken Bones.
Edward Grey: Simon Markey.
Keir Hardie/Robert Cecil: Robert Willox.
Potter/Brown: Tony Turner.
Mrs Briggs: Stephanie Jacob.
Doctor Vale: Dermot Kerrigan.
Doctor Parker: Nick Malinowski.
Nurse: Elicia Daly.
Young Nurse: Stephanie Thomas.
Wardress: Ruth Keeling.
Guards: Edward Newborn. Joe Dunlop.
Charlie Power: Gerard Monaco.
Mrs Collins: Deborah Winckles.
Lord Curzon: David Beames.
Mrs Major: Barbara Kirby.
Felicity: Anna Lowe.
Director: Howard Davies.
Designer: Rob Howell.
Lighting: Neil Austin.
Sound: Paul Groothuis.
Music: Harvey Brough.
Projection Designer: Jon Driscoll.
Her Naked Skin is part of the Olivier Travelex Season – tickets at b£10, £15, £30.
2008-08-18 22:36:25