Her Naked Skin by Rebecca Lenkiewicz is the first play by a living woman to appear on the Olivier stage at the National Theatre. It is set in 1913 amidst the suffragettes’ struggle was at its height: Emily Wilding Davison’s suicide protest and increasingly militant direct action by women against public property had polarised public opinion. Hundreds of women were imprisoned and many who went on hunger strike were force fed through a tube pushed up the nose. A significant portion of the action takes place in prison and the force feeding isn’t for the fainthearted.
The play is ostensibly a love story between two suffragettes from very different social backgrounds. A clever ambiguity in the staging makes it possible to infer that seamstress Eve Douglas is drawn into the movement more from a spark of attraction to sophisticated Lady Celia Cain than any great conviction of principle. Their relationship develops in prison, blossoms when they are released and eventually turns sour. Bloggers have argued that it is trite to have lesbianism in a play about suffragettes, as if they must go together like steak and kidney or strawberries and cream. To do so is to miss the point: the sexual attraction between the two women is an expression of the heady glamour of being caught up in such an exciting sequence of events. Common cause leads to attraction in even the least salubrious of surroundings: why else are there office affairs?
Howard Davies’ direction subtly underscores the power of the various institutions in the play to restrict and confine individual freedom. The lumpen wardresses in the prison insist on imposing pointless petty rules on the women in their charge. Parliamentary procedure allows politicians to bury questions about force feeding under a debate on Irish Home Rule. The social status which allows Celia to pamper and patronise Eve is used against her when her husband, William, threatens to cut her off if she refuses to give up the movement. The long suffering William is bated from the safety of an armchair in his gentlemen’s club and threatened with being blackballed if he retaliates. Almost all the scenes are public places: every stolen kiss between Eve and Celia is interrupted by passersby, even their breakup happens within the confines of a stifling teashop where fellow customers intrude on their intimacy. It is a world in which other people are powerful.
The enormous Olivier stage is dominated by a raised elongated cage for the prison, which revolves to allow furniture to appear from under it for other locations. It is an ingenious contraption but (as it has to be revolved manually) it becomes a hindrance in the rapid scene changes in the middle of the play.
There are strong performances throughout and, whilst this is mainly a story about women, the male characters are well written and acted.
Part of the story Britons tell themselves concerns the fight for freedom in World War II. Not to vote in elections is said to be an insult to the memory of those who gave their lives. Lenkiewicz’s play is a timely reminder that there are many chapters in that story and not all of them are written by men.
