We Never Clothed
People With Principles Productions
Writer/Creator: Kate Smith and Amy J. Lester
How far would you go to be free? Audrey and Moira are trapped. As bombs rip through the streets above, the two performers take the opportunity to escape along with their audience. The women must bare it all as they struggle to take control of their lives and assert their independence.
[...] on Laurier. I think I get a shout-out in the show. I want to go check. I’m vain like that. We Never Clothed Boobies. Kate Smith. I think there’s a musical number too. But mostly I’m going for the [...]
Thanks To everyone for coming out for our first performance! If you saw the show leave a comment and let the fringe fans know what’s out there.
Amy
Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve seen the video trailer. You want to see We Never Clothed so you can see Kate Smith’s…
eyes.
Right! And you read Playboy for the articles.
Give me a break.
It’s no secret that onstage nudity puts bums in seats. And often what you get is a sore bum and the wish that the show will soon be over. Let me get on with my life and don’t take any more minutes that I will never get back again.
We Never Clothed left me wanting more. A lot more.
The dictum says: leave them wanting more. So normally this would be a compliment. But in this case it’s double-edged.
I want more of the acting, because it’s so good.
Kate Smith plays Moira Greene, the talented hoofer who can do it all: sing, dance, act, and pose “artistically”. And do it SO well. On cue, on pitch, on the beat, on time, every night. Plus matinees.
Here’s a challenge for some director: find a role that Kate Smith can’t do well.
Enter Amy J. Lester as Audrey Bennett, just up from the chorus line because her tit fell out of her dress at the audition.
I last saw Lester as the Woman in Green in Third Wall’s production of Peer Gynt. not a huge part, but I know she can act, sing and dance. And has nice eyes.
It’s hard enough for trained performers to be on top of their form, each night, every night. It’s tougher to deliberately act, sing, and dance badly, as Lester has to do as the performer Audrey, and then reverse gears and act so well as the backstage character. OK, I’m impressed. Attention, directors, come see what this little lady can do, before some other city snaps her up.
Peter Gorman is “the piano player just doing his job” at the burlesque theatre. Flashes of T and A and thighs in silk and satin don’t faze him. He’s seen it all and he just gets on with the job. Lay down the beat, keep up the syncopation, tinkle those ivories, don’t distract the soldiers in the audience with any wrong notes, and make the ladies look good on stage. Which he does admirably. Who knows what he gets up to once he leaves the theatre, but he’s a gentleman around the ladies in the dressing room.
With acting this good, as an audience member I am pleased to remain blissfully ignorant of the direction. I want to experience a good story. I don’t want to analyze direction. If Jessie Fraser does her job really well, I won’t even notice.
I do have one quibble with direction. I had no trouble hearing the actresses over the piano, but my seatmate found it hiding their diction. The audience is aging. Directors in this town often run the music a little too loud. Fraser could ask Gorman to go a little softer on the pedal.
But I do want more, much more, from the script.
Billed as 50 minutes, the performance on Friday night clocked in at a bare 40 minutes.
Kate Smith admits in the program notes that We Never Clothed is a work in progress. It has the feel of a work that could and needs to be expanded to say 75-90 minutes. (Note: I deliberately resisted saying that the play should be fleshed out, tempted mightily though I was to do so.)
Tell me more about Cathy who has disappeared from Moira’s life, leaving behind only clothes on the dressing room rack. Tell me more about Moira’s children. Are they safe with grandparents, or have they been packed off on a train out of London to live with stranger in the countryside away from the bombs? And give us some time for the relationship between Moira and Audrey to emerge. Yes relationships developed quickly in wartime. But at the same time people were wary of new attachments in the face of sudden and widespread death. Moira is appropriately wary of Audrey, but the switch to friendship feels too abrupt. Give us more sand in the oyster before we see the pearl. Jake’s Gift at Magnetic North took more time with the relationship between Jake and Petite Isabelle. This play can too. And maybe a little more about the Windmill Theatre as well. Having read some history of the theatre, I know why the ladies were allowed to pose but not move on stage in the nude, but does the modern audience?
I’m happy with the play as history, but Kate Smith writes about wanting “to try and make it relevant as we are currently involved in another war”. At this point in the development of this play, it doesn’t land for me. Our Canadian civilian population isn’t facing mass mechanized death from the skies nightly. In North America, 9/11 has been a one-off event. The western world isn’t facing millions of wartime deaths a year. Yes Iraq and Afghanistan saw civilian deaths in the tens of thousands. But a play about Dresden or Hamburg would be more relevant to Iraq or Afghanistan. Which would mean competing with Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Yes there has been genocide in our time in Rwanda. But a play about King Leopold and the Congo would be relevant to that, and wouldn’t have to compete with the WWII Holocaust.
In summary, an intriguing work in progress that I would recommend seeing for the acting alone. Well worth coming downtown.
And yes Amy J. Lester and Kate Smith have very pretty…
eyes.
[...] of the ladies in the conversation, in fact she who had sparked the conversation, is performing in We Never Clothed. I haven’t had a chance to see it yet but I’ve only heard positive commentary so far. [...]
[...] like to see. I spent quite a bit of time last night chatting to one of the performers/writers of We Never Clothed. During WWII dedicated actors and theatre-goers apparently didn’t let a little thing like bombs [...]
[...] quick jaunt got us back to Arts Court theatre for We Never Clothed. There are moments in this show where the undeniable talents of these actresses shine through, and, [...]
My write up on We Never Clothed
http://jessicaruano.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/we-never-clothed-redux-2010/
[...] Writing — nadinethornhill @ 23:58 Yesterday I caught the late night performance of We Never Clothed. Several weeks ago, creators Kate Smith and Amy Lester contacted me, asking if I’d be [...]