Skinning Skinners

A razor-slender social satire masquerading as a country-house lark, Skinning Skinners peels the epidermis off the Edwardian leisure class and exposes the raw, twitching nerves beneath. Lillian Hall’s penniless but preternaturally shrewd heroine, invited to a weekend shooting-party as comic relief for the moneyed set, discovers that every guest has come armed with a private scheme: Irma Harrison’s widowed hostess plots to auction her step-son’s virginity to the highest-ranking title; Dan Mason’s self-made tycoon intends to fleece the estate with a forged railway option; Johnny Dooley’s seemingly dim-witted valet is cataloguing silver for an inside job; Maurine Powers’ trouser-wearing photojournalist stalks the corridors for a muck-raking exposé. Over one delirious night of swapped bedrooms, loaded dice, and a purloined pearl dog-collar, allegiances pirouette, trousers vanish, and the great country house itself becomes a carnivalesque skin-shedding machine: footmen turn jewel thieves, debutantes turn anarchists, the butler quite literally loses face when his fake beard is yanked off in a tug-of-war for the family tiara. By the time the sun bleeds over the croquet lawn, the manor’s genteel façade lies in tatters, the servants have auctioned the heirlooms on the lawn like a bawdy souk, and the once-omnipotent hosts are reduced to bartering their last dignity for cab fare. Hall exits in a donkey cart, pockets bulging with other people’s secrets, having engineered not justice but joyous, democratic chaos—an upper-crust skinning that leaves nobody unscathed and the audience cackling like conspirators.