Frances Rufelle: Beneath the Dress

In one of the flagship shows of the Pleasance’s new cabaret-style Ghillie Dhu venue, West End stalwart Frances Ruffelle has put together an hour of musical numbers in which she attempts to get "Beneath the Dress" of the female performer. Slinking around in a series of corsets, dresses and lingerie, accompanied by a six-piece lounge jazz band dressed in pyjamas and kimonos, she purrs, croons and squeals her way through a series of songs about the vulnerability of women in showbiz. There are some obvious choices, such as the 1930 lament "Ten Cents a Dance" from the perspective of a put-upon stripper, and some less expected ones, like the wryly satirical "I Slept With Someone (Who Handled Kurt Cobain’s Intervention)", from the musical High Fidelity.

It’s framed as an evening of honest exposition, but the way Ruffelle plays with coyness and overt sexiness, girliness and womanhood, cattiness and fragility, is as superficial as it is predictable; what we end up with is the depressingly familiar sight of a 40-something woman attempting to act half her age. On the few occasions that the show attempts to justify its place in the theatre programme, like when Ruffelle invites fellow die-hard luvvie Sadie Frost onstage for a song and a bit of light banter, the performances are stiff and unconvincing. There’s nothing technically wrong with the music and the predominantly late middle-aged audience seem impressed. But for those of us who long for a day when popular depictions of womanhood move on from the days of Pussy Galore, it’s a tedious and dispiriting hour.