Theatre review of The Naked Truth at Hackney Empire
A play about pole-dancing starring Abi Titmuss and Lisa Riley is about as hideous as it sounds
1 July 2009
Rating: 1/5
ABI TITMUSS, as dance instructor Gabby coaching five unlikely women to perform in a charity show, is mind sappingly dull. Riley (the sex-obsessed rookie) spends most of the time bouncing her ample cleavage. Titmuss (who critics first warmed to after her stage debut in Arthur Miller's Two Way Mirror in 2006) is stifled by a suffocatingly bland script, but she's in her comfort zone when she finally wraps her legs around one of the three centre-stage poles. The trouble is, she's shimmying to Flashdance, surreally bayed on by an audience of rotund 50-something mothers.
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The script sinks into a mush of sentimental cliche as one contrived back story emerges after another. The cast camp it up like a group of children pumped with cola and starved of attention, and the two hours end with a crescendo of sorely needed pole-dancing, lights and music.
The play clearly isn't intended for 20-something guys like me, but I dare any woman who hasn't yet drawn her pension and whose life hero isn't Coronation Street's Fiz Brown, to enjoy this.
Naked Truth transfers to Cheltenham's Everyman Theatre 1-4 July, www.everymantheatre.org.uk
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