Shoe Lady
Royal Court, London Until Saturday, 1hr 5mins
What is it with women and shoes? Some deep female connection to footwear (not even a millipede could wear my wife’s collection all at once) certainly haunts this weird story of Viv, a hard-pressed, quirky, querulous mum who loses a shoe on the Tube on her way to work as an estate agent.
It stars the superb Katherine Parkinson, last seen on stage in Home, I’m Darling, and who will be wearing Felicity Kendal’s wellies in the forthcoming stage version of The Good Life in Bath.
In this weird playlet by E V Crowe, Viv talks to the curtains, gets into a wrestling match with a one-shoe-wearing homeless woman (Kayla Meikle) and generally goes bonkers for 65 minutes, with a bare foot that starts to bleed horribly.
In this weird playlet by E V Crowe, Viv (Katherine Parkinson) talks to the curtains and gets into a wrestling match with a one-shoe-wearing homeless woman (Kayla Meikle)
Under a lavatory door a squatting woman donates Viv her shoes, the sort of random act of kindness you might get in a whimsical French film.
I rather liked the fact that the writer gives the uncomprehending hubby (Tom Kanji) almost no lines. He and their little child are there to disguise what is essentially a monologue.
One that reveals Viv’s nose-diving self-esteem and her angst in our sole-less consumer society. The only moment of actual drama is a mildly shocking crime committed in the sanctity of Russell & Bromley.
Directed by Vicky Featherstone, the production’s mutating shapes of the black-walled set (designed by Chloe Lamford) complement the writing’s abstract, poetic quality, and Parkinson’s vivid and enjoyable performance helped allay my suspicion that this short shoe play is a bit cobblers.
Love, Loss & Chianti
Riverside Studios, London Until May 17, 1hr 30mins
Rating: 
Cold Feet star Robert Bathurst and Rebecca Johnson perform two pieces by the poet Christopher Reid in this beguiling double-bill.
The first part is about Reid’s wife, actress Lucinda Gane, who died of cancer in 2005. A Scattering is an intimate account of their last holiday together in Crete, the final weeks of her illness and the widower’s life alone.
It’s almost unbearably good; real, down to earth, the grief unstated but etched in every line.
Robert Bathurst plays a bibulous editor at a London publishing firm . Rebecca Johnson is excellent as the woman who can’t imagine what she ever saw in the slurring, embittered loser
The mood then lightens into farce in the hilarious Song Of Lunch. Bathurst plays a bibulous editor at a London publishing firm who has a lunch date with an old flame in a Soho restaurant.
Knocking back the chianti, he completely blows it. Rebecca Johnson is excellent as the woman who can’t imagine what she ever saw in the slurring, embittered loser opposite. ‘You’re leering,’ she says coldly as his hopes of a leg-over crumble to ash.
Reid’s evocative verse makes the Italian restaurant come so alive that you’re effectively in it.
Directed by Jason Morell, both acts are enriched by Charles Peattie’s mesmerising animations.
A superb evening of wit, wisdom and wine.
Night Of The Living Dead Remix
Leeds Playhouse Touring until Saturday, 2hrs
Rating: 
Here’s a theatrical version of the classic flesh-eating zombie B-movie (by George Romero) that so terrified youngsters back in 1968. Using hand-held cameras, the cast recreates the creepily effective, low-budget, black-and-white cult movie.
Its hero is a black guy, holed up in a farmhouse, fending off the outstretched arms of ghouls trying to eat him and his fellow white survivors.
On one screen you get the original film, on another the projection of the seven actors below matching it shot for shot. Every sweaty glance, hammy gasp and chewed human limb gets perfectly copied in theatre company Imitating The Dog’s homage that is part comedy, but mostly a formidable feat of replication.
Added is a score (by James Hamilton) plus footage of Martin Luther King and Jack and Robert Kennedy’s killings, suggesting that the enigmatic original with its bleak ending is about the racist hordes and gun violence.
But is it? To some British eyes the zombies could equally seem like undead Remain voters.
Technically totally ingenious, the show adds more to a film that made a virtue of less. The result isn’t as meaty.
Quality Street
The Viaduct Theatre, Halifax Touring until June 13, 2hrs 30mins
Rating: 
Quality Street has been made in Halifax since 1936. So it’s no wonder Northern Broadsides, based there, should stage J M Barrie’s 1901 play – such a hit for the Peter Pan playwright that the chocolates were named after it.
It’s a Regency romcom with a silly twist leading to mistaken identities. Pretty Phoebe Throssel thinks Valentine Brown is about to propose; actually, he’s off to war. By the time he returns a decade later, she’s a wornout, embittered teacher.
Convinced he sees her as a pitiable figure, she pretends to be her own made-up niece and swans off to a ball.
Jessica Baglow (above) is a bright Phoebe, an Austen-like heroine. This is a very enjoyable show: a sweet and slightly nutty confection
Laurie Sansom’s production neatly has actors playing local women who worked at the Halifax chocolate factory commenting on the story.
Jessica Baglow is a bright Phoebe, an Austen-like heroine. This is a very enjoyable show: a sweet and slightly nutty confection.
Holly Williams
Women Beware Women
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London Until April 18, 2hrs 30mins
Rating:
The bloodbath at the end of Thomas Middleton’s Jacobean gorefest makes the corpsestrewn final scene of Hamlet look positively restrained. Poisoned wine, death by molten gold and venom-tipped arrows from a skimpily clad Cupid abound.
This comes after rape, incest and all-round duplicity by men who subjugate women and use them as commodities.
So to play much of this for laughs is something of an eyeopener. Set in the Eighties – much Versace is worn – this production reflects modern cynicism and that of the play’s male-dominated world, though Tara Fitzgerald as the manipulative Livia, is a throaty-voiced pimp in Chanel.
Set in the Eighties this production reflects modern cynicism, though Tara Fitzgerald (above) as the manipulative Livia, is a throaty-voiced pimp in Chanel
Two dark moments in Amy Hodge’s lively production – which has cut the play by a third – highlight the ugly heart of Middleton’s work. A rape is depicted with subtle movement, while the male inspection of one woman for her virginity is horribly humiliating.
This all treads a difficult line between comedy and tragedy, and it doesn’t always work; when the comeuppances are doled out with gay abandon in the campy final masque, it’s difficult to care that much.
Mark Cook