Mrs Henderson Presents
Theatre Royal Bath
On the eve of the Second World War, Laura Henderson, a wealthy widow, decides to splash her cash as an impresario. Success comes when she realises that bums on stage will mean bums on seats. With a dash of derrière in faintly artistic tableaux, her theatre thrives.
This cheerful, sentimental new musical — a thoroughly British muddle of melody, patriotism and innuendo — is drawn from a 2005 film about London’s Windmill Theatre, which proffered nude pleasures throughout the Blitz. Here, meek Maureen, the theatre tea girl, sheds her qualms to become its resident Venus. Indeed, the show sees nothing to debate in women performing naked. (Could you guess that the creative team, bar one, is male?) The writer and director, Terry Johnson, correlates the Windmill’s bare girls with our brave boys. It’s baps out for the war effort, ladies, and yah-boo-nipples to Hitler!
In Andrew Wright’s sprightly choreography, the stern Lord Chamberlain’s office becomes a ministry of silly dances, while the Windmill ladies give jaunty jiggle. The title role benefits from Tracie Bennett’s staunch twinkle as Mrs H — she’s a Churchill in furs — but the highlight of George Fenton and Simon Chamberlain’s score is What a Waste of a Moon, a yearning soft-shoe shuffle for Maureen and her almost-love (the amber-voiced Emma Williams and the deft Matthew Malthouse).
The show doesn’t always know whether to cheek or chide us. Frantic wink-and-wiggle numbers are elbowed aside by stentorian exhortations on loss and courage: “People burying their loved ones while we’re burying our heads.” It’s a slightly queasy but often endearing evening, if overlong: it shares its subject’s stamina.
