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Based on a true story, the witty Martin Sherman script directed by Stephen Frears, concerns an elderly widow, Laura Henderson (Dench), with nothing but time and money on her hands. After sticking her fingers at needlepoint, she has a creative epiphany and buys a broken-down theater in London’s Soho district. Joining up with noted impresario Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins), she stages a “non-stop revue” to great success. But other theaters soon copy the format, almost driving her out of business. Then, she comes up with another brainstorm. “Let’s have naked girls. Don’t you think?” she asks her flabbergasted partner. The problem is that this is 1930’s England and nudity is forbidden in the theater. Not to be thwarted, Mrs. Henderson meets with the Lord Chamberlain, (Christopher Guest), whom she’s known since he was a little boy “I’ll ask Tommy for a permit,” she says.
An obvious winner with servicemen, the show also provides girls for the soldiers to see after the performances. Matchmaker that she is, Mrs. Henderson sets up one “innocent-faced” Army man with shy nude model Maureen (Kelly Reilly), to seriously tragic results. Van Damm, who has his own love-hate relationship with his patroness, is outraged and tells the meddling matriarch to stay out of other people’s business.
We then learn that Mrs. Henderson’s only child, a son who was killed in the First World War, left behind a “French postcard” among his possessions. Because it is unlikely that her boy had ever seen a real-life nude woman, Mrs. Henderson gives an emotional speech, revealing her determination that the new generation of British servicemen would not share the same fate. “Mrs. Henderson Presents” has everything one would want in a movie: humor, tragedy, show-stopping production numbers and, of course, nude girls. It also has the great Judi Dench.
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