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SYDNEY FESTIVAL - THE RED SHOES
Review

SYDNEY FESTIVAL - THE RED SHOES

January 19 2011

THE RED SHOES, York Theatre at the Seymour Centre; January 18-30.

Second-time visitors to Sydney, Cornish company Kneehigh Theatre have come with a show “based on the wondertale” by Hans Christian Andersen. Not a fairy tale, you’ll note: this isn’t for the easily squeamed nor for pink-clad mini-temptresses hoping for a nice Barbie story with a happy ending. A handsome prince doesn’t rescue the dancing princess rather, a friendly butcher comforts her even as he expertly amputates her feet, still shod in the recalcitrant red clogs. It should provoke nightmares and second thoughts in anyone with too grand a passion for Sex and the City shoes: beware your anarchic Louboutins, girls.

Kneehigh is a company of actors and creatives that also generates passion: people love them, follow their work avidly and see every show. This is a lot easier for those in the UK and Europe, where they tour extensively. We’re lucky in Sydney to have been their destination with Tristan and Yseult, which came to the Festival six years ago, to great acclaim and popular success.

The Red Shoes has all their trademark vivacity, bawdy hilarity, physical and musical richness and soaring imagination. But it’s also a darker, more reflective and sombre show – even in its humour, which tends towards poignancy and pathos, slightly grubby Y-fronts and white vests. The underwear – in which the cast of eight forlornly wander the theatre foyer, pre-show – is key to the nightmare world of director Emma Rice’s. Nervous giggles, or sympathetic smiles among onlookers testify to the underlying anxiety of those of us who’ve dreamed of turning up somewhere in our undies or worse; and of being sternly admonished for prideful or vain behaviour.

Narrated by Lady Lydia (a ferociously glamorous Giles King) in Brechtian style, in words by poet Anna Maria Murphy, this is an Old Testament tale: forgiveness and loving kindness are in short supply; punishment and ridicule, shame and fear stalk the shadows. In the role of The Girl, Patrycja Kujawska is at once graceful, frenetic, pathetic and frightening with her shaven head and endless dancing. Musicians Stu Barker and Ian Ross bracket the small, raised stage in the centre of the cavernous York Theatre and lubricate the story with diverse instruments including a traditional harp, trombones, accordion as well as a sumptuous backing track.

SYDNEY FESTIVAL - THE RED SHOES

The rackety, shambolic look of the set (Bill Mitchell design, Malcolm Rippeth lighting) seems to deliberately belie the sophistication and ambition of the Kneehighs: it’s a witty and ironic look that playfully cocks a snook at their success. Inventiveness and originality run riot with the simple, evil tale and the spectacle is played out on two levels at least and with the aid of a deceptive set of folding doors that conceal as much as they reveal.

The Red Shoes is not a new show: it’s ten years old in the repertoire of a company that celebrated its 30th year in business in 2010. So although it’s tempting to speculate that it resonates with what’s happening in Britain now – post-GFC and in an era of tough, mean public life that cares not a whit for the desperate dancing of ordinary citizens – it can’t be so easily or glibly pigeon-holed. Rather, it plays with the everyday, turns it on its head and reminds us that there’s no such thing as “ordinary” – but at the same time beware and honour “those who dare to dance a different dance.”

 

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