My Life in the Nude

Wicked?  Goddess?

Whatever - Maude Davey is a legend!

This rich, curious, beguiling, camp and fun show is a memorable night of Melbourne Theatre history.  Don’t hesitate to book a ticket because you think you might feel awkward – everyone is probably thinking the same thing.  Davies unites the house by confidently asserting some ground rules, most particularly, she is to be the only one getting her gear off.  And with the disarming intimacy of her nudity, keen sensitivity and performed sincerity, bonds of shared experience are formed amongst the audience.  You can comfortably leave all prudery at home, relax and enjoy being thought-provokingly entertained.

Fascinatingly Maude reenacts her famous Ms. Wicked ‘strawberry’ number.  The heat of youthful sexuality is remembered and portrayed, with just the right touch of irony, in an older less volatile body.  This one, I was there for, at the Club, at the ACT UP Benefit - Shed The Underworld.  I remember the astonishment and my own prudish shock at catching a glimpse of Ms. Davey mascaraing her pubes in the dressing room. 

With honorable mentions to other extraordinary performers such as Jeannie Little and of course Moira Finucane, Davey, mostly barely clothed, portrays a variety of wonderful larger than life characters from Liz Taylor to the disturbing, gender-bending man who is beautiful Agent Cleve (Is he a hermaphrodite?).  There are heaps of character and costume changes.  On stage Davey is supported by a very dour Stage Manager (played by?), Deborah Eldred.

I heard Maude discuss My Life in the Nude with Emma Ayres on Radio National and realized I was about to fit the standard audience demographic of a middle-aged woman with her two gay male companions. But bring anybody who is prepared to have their ‘cage’ rattled a little.

The concern Davey expressed, on air and in the show, that performing naked could be considered the territory of youthful bodies, bodies that talk of the future, is understandable.   But could she be underestimating the ethereal beauty of the more fragile aging (and yes decaying) body and the myriad of ideas that could be expressed with and through it?

There is such a fog of invisibility surrounding older and elderly women in our community.  We seem to be able to completely forget that they too once had sexual appetites in a way that dispossess them of their histories and legitimacy.   Surely Maude Davey’s nude shows will hold even more currency as she matures and only enhance our Cabaret and broader culture.

Audience members are called upon – have your glasses on hand (if you are also aging), incase you need to read something in the generous spirit of spontaneity – ‘and oh what the hell’.   

A night you are unlikely to forget and a night that is liable to leave you campaigning for Maude Davey to keep performing without her clothes.

Marvelous!

Suzanne Sandow 

Photographer: Ponch Hawkes.