Roaring Women and Class Acts: The Naked Truth and the Chippendales’ Ultimate Girls Night Out

Abstract

In July 2007 I went to the Grand Theatre in Lancaster to see a touring production of The Naked Truth by Dave Simpson because a friend was in the cast. Pre-publicity for this show points to the similarities between this play, the films The Full Monty (1997), Calendar Girls and the play Stepping Out (1984), filmed with Liza Minnelli in 1991.¹ Set in a ‘village hall’ around a pole-dancing class entitled ‘wiggle and giggle with me’, The Naked Truth brings together five white, female characters each with different reasons for attending. Over a period of several months they bond, fall out and bond again. The show climaxes with a pole-dancing event, put on by the women to raise money for a breast cancer charity. This is in support of one of the group, ‘Sarah’ (Pauline Fleming), who has already had a mastectomy and suffers a reoccurrence of this cancer during the course of the narrative.