Stage Beauty (2004)

The role of woman has come a long way since the 1660s, both in the conjoined theaters of the home and the workplace and also within the orbits of the actual dramatic arts. Prior to the time of England’s King Charles II, female characters upon the London stage were played by male thespians. At the seventeenth-century time depicted in Stage Beauty (2004), keen-eyed monarch Charles decreed that henceforward real ladies would tackle the parts written for the fairer sex. This arrangement would seem to benefit everyone involved--the men in the audience were granted license to fully gawk at real representatives of the tender gender in the flesh, and women themselves were granted access to a whole new workplace. But what of the poor, sweet-faced ham who is suddenly unfit to be cast as a leading lady simply because he’s carrying the wrong equipment between his legs? Unmanned in a most ironic manner, one such Stage Beauty teams up with his former dresser to mount a most unlikely comeback.