Sex In The City
Cheeky, charming 'Mrs. Henderson' presents nude showgirls in wartime London

Widowed ladies of a certain age are expected to behave themselves. Laura Henderson thought otherwise. Having lived primarily in India with her husband, she was nearly 70 when she lost him in the 1930s. But instead of retiring quietly from life to attend to her roses, she did something completely different. She bought a derelict theater, the Windmill, in London's Soho district, and produced a live nude revue.

Mrs. Henderson was a real person. The Windmill was a real theater, remembered fondly to this day by a generation of former showgirls and patrons. But the details of the story are open to charming interpretation by scriptwriter Martin Sherman and director Stephen Frears in Mrs. Henderson Presents, a witty, poignant, and lively evocation of period mores which, like the shows Mrs. Henderson presented, cultivates a ribald aura over a thinly veiled heart of gold.

Actually, it's misleading to suggest that Mrs. Henderson herself ever behaves with anything less than matronly decorum. As portrayed in the film by the marvelous Judi Dench, she's simply bored to the teeth by widowhood after burying her husband in 1937, and rich enough to do something about it. Fed up with bureaucratic charitable committees and embroidery, her only pleasures are punting on the Thames and hopping over to Normandy to visit the French grave of her only child, a son killed in the first World War.

On a whim, she buys the Windmill Theater and devotes her considerable energies to restoring it. With no showbiz background whatsoever, she hires theatrical veteran Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins) to manage it for her. He considers her a rude, fluttery, interfering old dragon. She considers him intractable, ill-bred, and middle-class. But after a shaky start, they come to respect each other enormously, while their ever-contentious partnership fuels their enterprise and the movie.

Van Damm hatches the idea of an all-day vaudeville-type revue of singing, dancing, and comedy acts he calls "revuedeville." When the concept proves so successful during the dispirited Depression that other venues adopt it and start siphoning off the Windmill's business, Mrs. Henderson comes up with a startling twist: "Let's have naked girls—don't you think?" As she further elaborates, "Paris is full of naked girls in bananas."

But London is not Paris. The only way to obtain a permit from the uptight royal censor, the Lord Chamberlain (Christopher Guest) is if the nude showgirls are posed absolutely still onstage, like artwork—lest the sight of a female body part in motion enflame the ungovernable passions of the beholders. Van Damm comes up with a series of nude Tableaux grouped around such popular themes as mermaids, American Indians, and Britannia, interspersed with songs by the juvenile singer Bertie (Will Young, whose sweet, reedy tenor propelled him to stardom in Britain via Pop Idol, the English version of American Idol), and all of which are vividly recreated onscreen by production designer Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski and veteran costumer Sandy Powell.

None of the nudity in the film is at all lascivious. When the first crop of girls are too embarrassed to disrobe during early rehearsals, Bertie, the stage hands, and even Van Damm out in the auditorium agree to strip as well. When Mrs. Henderson sweeps in to find all of her employees of all shapes and sizes in the buff, the idea of nakedness immediately loses its prurience, and everyone is free to get on with it. Indeed, a clever undercurrent in the script shows how the girls gain confidence and spirit over time as their Tableaux become popular with a new generation of innocent young soldiers (in that pre-Playboy era) en route to the second World War.

The enormously engaging young actress Kelly Reilly (shorn or her usual red hair in a platinum blonde bob) is on hand as the de facto leader of the showgirls. And while the onscreen nudity is innocent, the film is subversive in other ways; even as Nazi bombing raids devastate London, Mrs. Henderson dares to proclaim "When you lose a son in a war—no matter what others say—you know he's died in vain." If such a sentiment can be expressed during what writer Studs Terkel called the last "good war," consider the ramifications in these neo-puritanical and belligerent times.

MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS With Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, and Kelly Reilly. Written by Martin Sherman. Directed by Stephen Frears. A Weinstein Company release. Rated R. minutes. (***)
Review published in Good Times, Feb. 2, 2006