Mrs Henderson Presents ***½ (2005, Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, Kelly Reilly, Will Young, Toby Jones, Thelma Barlow, Christopher Guest) – Classic Movie Review 2977

Directed Stephen Frears’s highly entertaining 2005 comedy drama tells the engaging true story of the woman who ran a pioneering nudie theatre in London and kept the show open all through the WW2 Blitz.

Judi Dench is ideally cast as rich, eccentric 70-year-old widow Mrs Laura Henderson, who buys the Windmill Theatre in London as a hobby now that she’s become widow in the Thirties. Bob Hoskins is equally ideal as Vivian Van Damm, the autocratic manager she appoints to run it.

In American playwright Martin Sherman’s amusing and informative screenplay, the duo start a continuous variety revue called Revudeville in 1937. But they begin to lose money when other theatres copy their innovation.

So then the enterprising Mrs Henderson suggests that they add female nudity in the show like the Moulin Rouge in Paris. The theatre censorship of the day was in the hands of Lord Cromer (Christopher Guest), the Lord Chamberlain, who reluctantly allows this controversial novelty on condition that the nude performers remain immobile. Thus the performances can be considered art, like nude statues in museums.

This catches on and proves a big success, but the Second World War intervenes. Because the theatre’s auditorium is underground, it is comparatively safe during the bombing of London, and morale-boosting performances continue throughout the war, leading to the theatre’s motto ‘we never close’.

Kelly Reilly is also very good in a significant sub-plot role as cast member Maureen, who gets involved at Mrs Henderson’s instigation with a young soldier, an audience regular, and becomes pregnant.

Also in the cast are Toby Jones as Gordon, Thelma Barlow as Lady Conway, Anna Brewster as Doris, and Rosalind Halstead as Frances and Pop Idol winner Will Young in his acting debut as Bertie, who also sings.

The show is harmless and comfortably old fashioned, and mostly very prim and proper, but genitals of three men are exposed to view, the breasts of several women are exposed, some relatively close up and the pubic region of several women can be seen at a distance. And Hoskins joins in the spirit of the occasion!

A musical version of the film, starring Emma Williams and Tracie Bennett, opened at Theatre Royal, Bath, in August 2015.

Frears also directed My Beautiful Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears, The Queen, High Fidelity and The Program (2015). He and Dench reunited for Philomena in 2013.

British national treasure Bob Hoskins died from pneumonia on April 29 2014, aged 71. On 8 August 2012, Hoskins announced his retirement from acting after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2011. He appeared in films such as The Long Good Friday (1980), Mona Lisa (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Mermaids (1990) and Hook (1991).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2977

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