The Dressing Book – An outdoor play by The Rudes

The very popular Rude Mechanical Theatre Co will be in Winchelsea for one night as part of their South of England tour. The play is variously both an hilarious comedy, but equally provocative, poetic and tender. Set in 1795 in Tunbridge Wells, it plays games with time and social status and has a twist in the tail. It follows the ‘social round’ of Maybelline Erstwhile who records which dresses she wears for each event in her ‘dressing book’ – and the men she encounters while wearing them. The play opens a window on the way clothes were – and still are – a means by which men could control the separated public and private worlds of women. Has anything changed? Through a process of ‘magic realism’ the action changes to the 1960’s and Maybelline’s clothes, which had been her prison, now set her free.