Empire Theatre, Eden Court, 13 May 2008

The Naked Truth (© Theatre Productions)

NINETY NINE percent of the audience at the Empire Theatre was female, ranging in age from teens to goodness knows, most of them the epitome of the lovely Scots phrase “gallus besom”, generally dressed up to the nines and universally out for a good time – they started clapping along to Tina Turner and cheering the suggestion that phones should be turned to vibrate (oo -er missus!) even before the curtain went up.

There were a handful of very, very brave men there, each of whom should have been awarded a medal as it was like being in a Glaswegian hen party. A Glaswegian hen party with seven hundred screaming women, that is… after that experience , nothing should ever frighten them again.

So, a play about a pole dancing class. I’d guessed at a gender-reversed Full Monty, which wasn’t far wrong. But since this was written and carefully researched by Dave Simpson (author of Girls Night Out), it touched on the things that women talk about when they’re together – birth, death, and everything in between. In fact, it was not entirely dissimilar to an evening spent sitting around a table with half a dozen women friends and a few bottles of wine (an experience which had been a formative part of the aforesaid research).

The play began with half a dozen strangers, ranging from defiantly fat, defiantly cheerful Bev (played by the ebullient Lisa Riley, of Emmerdale and Fat Friends) to shy, withdrawn, older Sarah (Jayne Tunnicliffe, comedienne and alumna of Coronation Street) turning up for a pole dancing class at the village hall.

Annoyingly perfect, perfectly tactless Tricia (Julie Buckfield, from Hollyoaks and Grange Hill), hopelessly inexperienced Faith (Gemma Wardle) and longsuffering mother of two Rita (understudy Georgina North, replacing Samantha Seagar) were the other students, being taught by single mother Gabby (Lucy Rusedski).

So far, so stereotypical. The jokes would not have disgraced a working mens’ club and went down (oops) a treat. But as the cast clowned their hopeless first attempts at sinuously sexy dancing, and began to discover and relate to each other, the audience was led into their lives. A few scenes in, Tricia’s tactlessly cruel barbs were being greeted by outraged gasps and boos.

The plot turned around Sarah’s decision, following an unsuccessful mastectomy, to stage a charity pole dancing event in aid of research into cancer; the sub plots concerned the breakdown of Rita’s marriage to the boorish Terry, Faith’s gradual blossoming, and the discovery of a burgeoning love between Bev and Tricia’s husband.

During this the class developed that interwoven, supportive network of relationships that underpins female lives everywhere. Each class ended with a pole dancing routine of increasing complexity – and it has to be said that watching Lucy Rusedski slither and swivel athletically and gracefully around the pole in the sort of shiny black stiletto shoes that Allen Jones used to slaver over was extremely impressive.

The music was terrific – anything from Peggy Lee to the Spice Girls via Shania Twain and culminating in the ecstatic Aretha Franklin with ‘Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves’. By this point everyone was standing up and clapping along to the music, your reviewer included. Girl power – well, get yourself along to The Bacchae next month if you want to see how ancient and terrifying a concept that is.

Not being a soap opera viewer, I had not heard of any of the cast of The Naked Truth before (I would have been quite lost without the programme) which put me in a minority of one. But here’s a thought for you – if Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare were around today, they’d be writing for Corrie or Eastenders. (Come to think of it, if Euripides were around today, he’d be writing for Eastenders). Today’s popular culture is tomorrow’s classic. I’m not saying that The Naked Truth is exactly a classic in the making – but it is definitely an absolutely terrific girls’ night out.

© Jennie Macfie, 2008

Links

• The Naked Truth
• Eden Court Theatre