THE RED SHOES. Kneehigh Theatre. Touring to 24 November

Tour

THE RED SHOES

Kneehigh Theatre on tour.

Runs 1hr 55min One interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 5 November 2001 at Oxford Playhouse

Hans Andersen meets women's movement in Kneehigh's unstoppably inventive re-creation.Once more Cornwall's Kneehigh create a unique imaginative performance world, this time with Hans Anderson's tale of the girl who becomes prisoner to her own wilfulness when she dons red shoes and can't stop dancing.

Looming over events is the menacing Lady Lydia, an overblown grande dame with huge wig and flowing dress in Giles King's drag act. Swaying round stage and audience, she also directs events from the upper level of the typically ramshackle-looking Kneehigh set – a seemingly random structure that interacts surprisingly flexibly with performances.

Performance is an idea underpinning the show, presented by a company of poor players kitted out in dirty white underwear, their characters and props contained in shabby, labelled luggage. The grand Lydia herself is eventually revealed as just another such. She leaves the story 'to simmer' while we have a fake levitation or unsuccessful escapology. As always, Kneehigh creates a world with its own flow of logic.

The company's fusion of actors, props (3 prop-makers, 6 design assistants are credited), lighting and music offers a stream of stimulating surprises. And unexpected connections: the Girl's dance marathon between hell and salvation is played out to blasts of music from Tannhauser, that Wagnerian hero who chooses pleasure and damnation up to last minute salvation.

Adapter-director Emma Rice turns her dancing protagonist into a scarlet woman – the few clothes change to red before eventual purification - and puts her through the suffering of foot amputation, by a butcher with great pride in his trade. But she refuses to damn her. The girl rejects the hereafter to return to her company.

At the start the all sway to the sinister tones of Khatchaturian's Masquerade waltz. It seems childishly simple. When they do so, united again, at the end the same simple motion has a movingly childlike simplicity. That transformed impact is a tribute to the theatrical alchemy of this extraordinary company.

2001-11-08 09:12:26