Review of Her Naked Skin
This is the first play written by a living woman to be staged at the Olivier (National Theatre). It is a love story set against the backdrop of the suffragist struggle of the early 20th century.
The scene is set with the appropriate props — the sash, the placard, the banner, and shocking original footage of Emily Davison’s fatal leap in front of the King’s horse — before the characters are introduced to us one by one. Each have been imprisoned for crimes associated with their involvement in the Women’s Social and Political Union.
At this point the play is both funny and atmospheric (thanks to an impressive set design), while the prison scenes portray the dedication of the suffragists to the cause of women’s emancipation. It’s not long, however, until the high drama of the politics of the time is ditched in favour of lesbian melodrama.
Now I don’t disapprove of a bit of lesbian melodrama, in fact the romance between the main characters I found moving at times. But what is frustrating is that there appears to be little real insight into how the politics of liberation and class struggle would have been entwined in the personal lives and relationships of the women depicted in the play. Perhaps I should say the lives of working-class women.
The lovers of the tale are a married, upper class lady and an East-End factory girl. While we come to understand the upper-class woman’s desire for freedom, and her sense of isolation and deep sadness caused by the constraints of her gender, the factory girl has barely any personality at all. Her motivations for joining the WSPU, where she came from, how her life and relationships might be affected by not only her dedication to the struggle for the vote but her consuming love for a comrade, areleft untouched.
The class dynamics only make an appearance as the upper-class women’s paternalism towards her lover — she orders her food at a restaurant, and speaks for her and so on. One hunger strike and one suicide attempt later, still the factory girl appears to have little inner life.
Overall, the play was enjoyable and not devoid of political commentary — the scenes depicting the debates of male parliamentarians of the time were discerning and believable — but why the playwright chose this period for her tale of love between two women is not obvious. There is a massive missed opportunity in this tale as, disappointingly, working-class people are made the object of someone else’s story.
