QUOTE
ABOUT THE PLAY
Peter Terson's "Strippers" was first performed in Newcastle in 1984. It had its London premiere in 1985, and the play's lasting success was largely due to the palpable sense of gentleness and compassion that emanates throughout. While never skirting around the issues or disavowing the bleakness and desperation at its heart, the play approaches its protagonists and their respective predicaments with a tender glance and in a decidedly non-judgmental way, while also managing to be hilariously funny.
The story:
"When the money stops, love flies out the window" - that's what Harry says. And he should know. After all, he makes quita a bit of money as a red-light entrepreneur of sorts: procuring striptease (or "exotic") dancers for the clubs in the recession-stricken North of England. And his business is thriving - now that men on the dole are spending most of their ample free time (and their social-security cheques) at the clubs where booze flows freely and watching the strippers is the only entertainment on offer. Harry's got more clubs to provide for than he's got girls in his books.
And Harry’s strippers are housewives, mostly. These women desperately need to earn the money back that their out-of-work husbands spent in the first place. On watching strippers, of course. Wendy Robson is such a housewife, a married woman and mother of one, with no skills to her name apart from the title of a former "Miss Whitley Bay". While her husband Bernard was still bringing in a steady if not lavish income, she certainly never had to work. But then Bernard finds himself out of work. Not only that, his very trade has become obsolete.
It is up to Wendy to try and make some money. She'll be working for Harry, she'll become a stripper. But for Wendy this will mean more than taking her clothes off: for the first time since she married she finds friends and realizes that there is a life beyond hearth and home. Under the caring tutelage of Buffy, a seasoned veteran of the stripping business, she embarks on what turns out to be a journey towards empowerment and self-discovery. Not only will she find dignity and decency in the most indecent surroundings, she will also realize that - beneath the guise of the caring housewife and mother - there always lay dormant another, a truer sense of self and womanhood, waiting to come to the fore. As Buffy puts it: "Nice girls go typing, they stay nice girls. Nice girls go stripping, and honey, they change!"
It will be up to Bernard to adapt to this new-found sense of self, whereas Wendy has to fight to protect both her own identity and her family from falling apart.
"Strippers" is about decent people trying to lead decent lives against almost insurmountable odds. That's why we feel that the story of Wendy and Bernard holds a universal appeal to which any audience in any country can readily relate.
Peter Terson's "Strippers" was first performed in Newcastle in 1984. It had its London premiere in 1985, and the play's lasting success was largely due to the palpable sense of gentleness and compassion that emanates throughout. While never skirting around the issues or disavowing the bleakness and desperation at its heart, the play approaches its protagonists and their respective predicaments with a tender glance and in a decidedly non-judgmental way, while also managing to be hilariously funny.
The story:
"When the money stops, love flies out the window" - that's what Harry says. And he should know. After all, he makes quita a bit of money as a red-light entrepreneur of sorts: procuring striptease (or "exotic") dancers for the clubs in the recession-stricken North of England. And his business is thriving - now that men on the dole are spending most of their ample free time (and their social-security cheques) at the clubs where booze flows freely and watching the strippers is the only entertainment on offer. Harry's got more clubs to provide for than he's got girls in his books.
And Harry’s strippers are housewives, mostly. These women desperately need to earn the money back that their out-of-work husbands spent in the first place. On watching strippers, of course. Wendy Robson is such a housewife, a married woman and mother of one, with no skills to her name apart from the title of a former "Miss Whitley Bay". While her husband Bernard was still bringing in a steady if not lavish income, she certainly never had to work. But then Bernard finds himself out of work. Not only that, his very trade has become obsolete.
It is up to Wendy to try and make some money. She'll be working for Harry, she'll become a stripper. But for Wendy this will mean more than taking her clothes off: for the first time since she married she finds friends and realizes that there is a life beyond hearth and home. Under the caring tutelage of Buffy, a seasoned veteran of the stripping business, she embarks on what turns out to be a journey towards empowerment and self-discovery. Not only will she find dignity and decency in the most indecent surroundings, she will also realize that - beneath the guise of the caring housewife and mother - there always lay dormant another, a truer sense of self and womanhood, waiting to come to the fore. As Buffy puts it: "Nice girls go typing, they stay nice girls. Nice girls go stripping, and honey, they change!"
It will be up to Bernard to adapt to this new-found sense of self, whereas Wendy has to fight to protect both her own identity and her family from falling apart.
"Strippers" is about decent people trying to lead decent lives against almost insurmountable odds. That's why we feel that the story of Wendy and Bernard holds a universal appeal to which any audience in any country can readily relate.