London 1913. Militancy in the Suffragette Movement is at its height. Thousands of women of all classes serve time in Holloway Prison in their fight to gain the vote. Amongst them is Lady Celia Cain who feels trapped by both the policies of the day and the shackles of a frustrating marriage. Inside, she meets a young seamstress, Eve Douglas, and her life spirals into an erotic but dangerous chaos. Her Naked Skin is set at a crucial moment when, with emancipation almost in sight, women refuse to let the establishment stand in their way . Media Partner for Travelex £10 Tickets - The Independent. Television Media Partner of Travelex £10 Tickets - skyARTS Channel 267. Part of the Travelex £10 season
Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Suffragette drama Her Naked Skin, the final production in the Travelex season and the first new play written by a woman to premiere on the National’s 100-seat Olivier stage, opened last week (31 July 2008, previews from 24 July).
Set in Holloway prison at the height of the Suffragette movement, Her Naked Skin concerns inmate Lady Celia Cain, whose encounter with a fellow prisoner, young seamstress Eve Douglas, leads her on an erotic but dangerous journey of discovery. It includes graphic depictions of force-feeding and self-harming, which caused a strong reaction at last Thursday's premiere (See Photos, 1 Aug 2008).
Directed by Howard Davies, the cast features Lesley Manville, whose previous credits at the National include The Alchemist and His Dark Materials as Lady Celia Cain, while Jemima Rooper plays her lover Eve. The large ensemble also includes Susan Engel, Adrian Rawlins, Ken Bones and Dermot Kerrigan. Her Naked Skin joins Melly Still’s production of The Revenger's Tragedy in rep, and finishes on 24 September 2008.
Critics were impressed by Davies “gripping” and “even-handed” production, which many felt had “epic” proportions. The cast were generally praised for their “outstanding performances”, and although leading ladies Manville and Rooper were both warmly applauded for their work, it was supporting actress Susan Engel who stole much of the limelight, being hailed by one critic as the “supporting performer of the year”. Some concern was expressed over an apparent “fluffy grasp of the politics” of the era, but generally critics appreciated Lenkiewicz’s ability to express the political through the personal in a “deeply affecting” play. Designer Rob Howell also fared well, receiving much praise for his “magnificent” stage designs.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (three stars) – “The first new play by a living woman writer on the Olivier stage is, suitably enough, one about suffragettes. But Howard Davies’s production of Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Her Naked Skin … is as much about personal as political emancipation; the central Sapphic love story … is a sort of serious Edwardian version of Prisoner: Cell Block H … Davies’s production combines an epic sweep with a personal intensity. In spite of a few jarring anachronisms of speech, the play might have been one of those lost Edwardian plays lately revived so tellingly at the Orange Tree. Lesley Manville and Jemima Rooper give outstanding performances, the one mixing brisk sensuality with steely determination, the other as careless, insolent and sultry as a Pre-Raphaelite painting. And there is fine support in a large cast from Susan Engel as a Mrs Pankhurst-style no-nonsense rabble-rouser and Ken Bones as Augustine Birrell, chief secretary for Ireland in Asquith’s cabinet, and a conciliatory Jewish doctor who mistrusts Freud.”
Dominic Cavendish in the Daily Telegraph – “Over the course of a gripping two and a half hours, impeccably paced by director Howard Davies and presented using a swirling array of interlocking grilles, Lenkiewicz shows us ordinary women doing extraordinary things … Yet Lenkiewicz also singles out men who defied the received chauvinism of their sex, neatly encapsulated in a scoffing Cabinet discussion conducted in the wake of the Derby debacle and presided over by Asquith … Celia Cain is a wholly plausible fictional creation made sympathetic flesh by Lesley Manville in a performance of beautifully brittle assurance. Through the furtive, giddy love that develops between this erudite, eloquent woman and Jemima Rooper's working-class Eve, who meet at Holloway, Her Naked Skin marries epic public concerns with the most intimate dilemmas. Celia's rapture cannot help but lead to rupture - both with her desperate husband (Adrian Rawlins, superb) and polite society. The show is bursting with high-definition performances steeped in the sensibilities and eccentricities of pre-war England: Susan Engel, as Florence, particularly embodies the formidable crankiness of the blue-stocking brigade. This is a big play with a big heart and I recommend it with a matching warmth. Lenkiewicz is making history here and, in so doing, demonstrating that she's got a great future.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian(four stars) – “It is shocking to think that Rebecca Lenkiewicz's play is the first full-length work by a woman to be seen on the Olivier stage. But Lenkiewicz makes up for lost time by exploring the hunger for political and personal emancipation that fuelled the suffragette movement in 1913; and, though one can niggle about this and that, her play colonises this daunting space with bravura confidence … The play is also excitingly staged. Rob Howell has created a magnificent design in which a series of interlocking steel frames constantly reform to remind us of the entrapment experienced by Edwardian women. The set is matched by the propulsive urgency of Howard Davies' production, which moves easily between the intimate and the epic, and the acting is faultless. Lesley Manville brilliantly conveys the inherent contradictions of Celia, whose vision of sexual and political freedom is compromised by her attachment to the benefits of her class. Jemima Rooper lends her lover the right surly sensuality, and, in the supporting performance of the year, Susan Engel sweeps all before her as a silver-haired militant buoyed up by a vision of the future. But that symbolises Lenkiewicz's play, which plants a defiant feminist flag on the Olivier stage.”
Paul Taylor in the Independent (four stars)– "…a deeply affecting and rousing drama … Skillfully balancing the wide-angled and the intimate, Her Naked Skin shows the struggle in its own right and as it impinges on the erotic affair between two suffragettes – a married toff, Lady Celia Cain (Lesley Manville), and a young seamstress, Eve Douglas (Jemima Rooper). They meet in Holloway … A scene of the forcible feeding of a hunger striker – illegal and perilous – is as upsetting as the blinding of Gloucester in Lear. Not that this even-handed play is unfair to men or blind to tensions in the movement. Imperious and complicated, Manville's brilliantly acted Lady Celia has grown out of her marriage to her childhood sweetheart. But she refuses to acknowledge that, after 15 years of supporting her in the cause, her husband is suffering from emotional neglect. Susan Engel is superb as Florence Boorman, a blue-stocking campaigner of great spirit and fervour, if occasionally a little tough on human weakness. It's through her that the sometimes very funny script expresses its caustic wit. When a prison doctor complains that one of his colleagues was horse-whipped by some of her women, she retorts: ‘I hope he paid them the going rate.’ It's humbling to be alerted to the courage and sacrifice of such forgotten women. This play is a salutary reminder for both sexes in our apathetic age that the hard-won vote can be seen as not just a democratic right but a democratic duty.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (four stars) – “…Miss Lenkiewicz's ingenious idea is to portray the cross-class, lesbian affair that breaks out over those potatoes, between married Celia and Miss Rooper's memorably smitten, vulnerable Eve, as a microcosm of the feminists' campaign to defy the rules of society. In charting the rise and not very well explained fall of the romance, its symptoms confined to perfunctory kissing and hands under skirts in parkland together with a brief bedroom scene, the author skates over the fact of Celia's five children … Despite its fluffy grasp of the politics of 1914 Her Naked Skin does offer a vivid impression of Edwardian society in embattled crisis. Rob Howell's set is dominated by two tiers of prison cages, emblems of a society trying to put a tight hold on freedom and women regarded as captives in gaol or out of it. The bleakly humorous Holloway scenes are absolutely superb, suggesting the infinite ways in which the suffragettes were harassed and humiliated by dumb authority ... Initially the play tingles with political vitality in Howard Davies's epic, musically atmospheric production … Susan Engel, in tremendous, witty form as Florence Boorman, the elderly, unmarried suffragette leader, offers haughty, triumphant antidotes to official agents of authority … Miss Manville's taut, tense Celia finally emerges from conflicts over politics and sex, Her Naked Skin’s big loser, having failed to pin her colours to any mast.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (three stars) – “…Manville gives a terrific performance as a restless, independent and rather cold aristo. You can't altogether blame her husband, Adrian Rawlins's William, for hitting the bottle or for taking increasingly desperate measures to prevent her serial imprisonment and force-feeding. Indeed, you applaud him when he risks social death by hitting one of the clubmen and politicians who mock Celia, taunt the suffragettes and joke that Davison ‘probably lost her way, like my mother’. Did sophisticated men really reduce themselves to ugly, callous caricatures in their opposition to the suffragettes? Well, perhaps. Myself, I'd have liked to have seen still more of the crusading women who are so boldly led by Susan Engel's indomitable old Florence Boorman and heard more of their internal arguments and quarrels. You wouldn't know from this play that the Pankhurst daughters ended up at each other's ideological throats. But whether Howard Davies' production is taking us to angry public meetings or a dauntingly ritualistic prison or Parliament itself, it often generates the epic excitement the subject merits.”
Simon Edge in the Daily Express (three stars) – “Bizarrely, this is the first time an original play by a woman has ever been done on the main stage of the National Theatre. It’s enough to make the suffragette heroines of Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s drama chuck themselves in front of racehorses all over again … Lenkiewicz is good at dramatising the bitter – and shamefully ill-remembered – struggle for universal suffrage. Designer Rob Howell’s grim backdrop of wire-mesh cages provides the cells for the prison episodes, but his adaptable set also turns neatly into a Cabinet room where Prime Minister Herbert Asquith tries to spin Davison’s death to his best advantage … Less successful is the human drama at the centre … It doesn’t help that Howard Davies’s production … plays down the social divide that could bring their relationship to life … And while Rooper is a talented young actress with a wonderfully expressive face … her main expression seems to be discomfort at having to snog a co-star old enough to be her mother. The only member of the cast having real fun seems to be Susan Engel, as a ferocious old jail-bird with all the best lines.”
The first new play by a living woman writer on the Olivier stage is, suitably enough, one about suffragettes. But Howard Davies’s production of Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Her Naked Skin – the final offering in this year’s Travelex £10 season - is as much about personal as political emancipation; the central Sapphic love story of a well-connected lawyer’s wife, Lady Celia Cain (Lesley Manville), and a Limehouse seamstress, Eve Douglas (Jemima Rooper), is a sort of serious Edwardian version of Prisoner: Cell Block H.
The two women meet while peeling potatoes in Holloway prison, a great grey clanking cage in Rob Howell’s imposing design where the regular inmates – “a lunatic fringe of frigid women who crave attention,” in the words of the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith (David Beames) – are hosed down, banged up and force-fed in between breaking windows and practising their shooting in Epping Forest.
The year is 1913, and the first image of the play is of a suffragette pinning on her sash to the music of “Oh, you beautiful doll.” Next thing, we see several re-runs of that blurry film of Emily Wilding Davison throwing herself in front of the king’s horse at the Derby. The idea that these politics of protest to secure the vote are risible is established when Celia is told that she won’t be convicted if the doctor declares that her mind is “fragile.”
In the House of Commons, only Keir Hardie (Robert Willox) raises his voice against the barbarity of forced feeding, a procedure enacted with grisly realism towards the end of the play. By this time Celia, whose seven children are mysteriously invisible throughout, has reached breaking point in her marriage – this recriminatory bust-up between Celia and William (Adrian Rawlins) is a fine, raw piece of writing – and has thought seriously about having sex with a waiter (Gerard Monaco) in the Ritz Hotel.
Davies’s production combines an epic sweep with a personal intensity. In spite of a few jarring anachronisms of speech, the play might have been one of those lost Edwardian plays lately revived so tellingly at the Orange Tree. Lesley Manville and Jemima Rooper give outstanding performances, the one mixing brisk sensuality with steely determination, the other as careless, insolent and sultry as a Pre-Raphaelite painting.
And there is fine support in a large cast from Susan Engel as a Mrs Pankhurst-style no-nonsense rabble-rouser and Ken Bones as Augustine Birrell, chief secretary for Ireland in Asquith’s cabinet, and a conciliatory Jewish doctor who mistrusts Freud.
As others did I had high hopes for this play, but was bored to sobs, a 1910's Tenko without the drama or character development. My heart lifted when Celia's husband gave her his ultimatum... sadly that fizzled. I'm not sure if Mr Hytner should "bugger off" just yet but I have been dreadfully disappointed by many of the recent NT offerings, please no more Katie Mitchell. - Hampton
02 Sep 08
Absolutely worth watching for Lesley Manville and Susan Engel, though I didn't rate Jemima Rooper and would love to have seen Manville better matched. Very engaging and accessible, though not one to see for historical accuracy or fantastic detail. See it for a good night out not a life changer. - mememe
02 Sep 08
Rebecca Lenkiewicz attempts to tell the story of women's suffrage and of the lesbian relationship between two suffragettes from opposite ends of the social scale. Unfortunately Her Naked Skin falls between two stools and is a well meaning disappointment. By attempting too much there is insufficient detail to either story - the background to the suffrage movement is sketchy and the end of the affair is left unexplained. The scenes in Holloway are mostly effective, mainly thanks to a superb performance from Susan Engel as a Mrs. Pankhurst type figure. Lesley Manville cannot be less than excellent but her character is so cold that it is ironic that the most sympathetic character is her long-suffering husband (Adrian Rawlins) who supports his wife's cause but has endured a loveless marriage in return. As Never So Good has proved, a history play can be very entertaining and the suffragette movement deserves similar treatment but Lenkiewicz has fallen short. - David Baxter
20 Aug 08
Pay £10 to witness one of the worst plays at the National for ages. Rebecca Lenkiewicz disappoints on all levels with this clunking, unconvincing script. Pity the cast that try to breathe life into this worthless piece. - Pat Stephens
19 Aug 08
Such a disappointment. Tedious, dull, cliche ridden script which brought nothing to what should be a riveting subject either politically or personally. Lesley Manville's strong performance could not redeem this dire effort - I simply did not care about her or the other women. I am amazed that a play without merit should have been staged with such pointless elaboration and expense. - Alice Lane
19 Aug 08
OK on suffragettes, really tedious attached love story. Well acted but not a good play. The set is impressive but also becomes tiresome. - HJ
15 Aug 08
A huge disappointment. I give it three stars for the acting alone, for the play itself is a rambling mish-mash of tired themes we've heard a hundred times before. We all know how unfair the situation of women was in the early 20th century: if a drama is to be made out of it, there should at least be something fresh in it. The love story between the two women and the unsatisfactory marriage of one of them seem almost like a separate play, and they detract from rather than adding to the central plot. The play is also far too long, and could have been cut by at least half an hour. The constant scene changes and the clanking revolving stage are very distracting, and I question the necessity of showing the graphic representation of force feeding. Lesley Manville delivers the dreadful script bravely, and is well supported by, especially, Susan Engel as Miss Boorman. I was not convinced by Jemima Rooper as Eve Douglas, who was unable to sustain her east London accent. The footage of Emily Davison throwing herself under the king's horse is a cliche which set the scene for everything that followed. - sc
13 Aug 08
Interesting play set in one year, 1913, among the more militant, suffragettes, involved in the struggle for female political rights. Woven into the play which incorporates some of the political and social conflict, direct action and sacrifices involved, is a relationship between two women of different classes who experience imprisonment yet also some freedom together. There are hostile males but also supportive men, in a play in which the shadow of prison actual and metaphorical reminds the audience of the many restrictions to which women were subject. The scenery moves because the number and type of scenes vary so widely, in a play also effectively using multimedia to refer to the epic nature of the struggle. The love affair wasn't important, they never are except to the people wrapped up in them, but such affairs must have gone on, rather as would more likely be the case in single sex institutions where people live in close proximity. Just eighty years ago women nationally won voting rights on a par with men, and this play in a national theatre marks that advance. You may need shaking, you'll certainly be stirred, for not all people agree with equality between the sexes. - El Peter
13 Aug 08
Gareth James sums up my own feelings,the NT really does seem to be having problems. Why on earth was this staged at the Olivier? - CAA
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