CurtainUp
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A CurtainUp London Review
Shoe Lady
Katherine Parkinson is a very talented actor and easy to relate to. The situation here is that Viv loses a shoe on the way to work when she is already late at the estate agents, where she shows prospective people round properties for sale. She is not succeeding at her job which pays commission on sales. The monologue is her, mostly unspoken, thoughts. Emma Crowe is a feminist and at one point Viv (Katherine Parkinson) when contemplating all she has to do, says she wishes she had a wife – that luxury middle class men may have in our paternalistic society. Increasingly middle class women, actually all women except for some of the ultra rich, also hold jobs as well as taking primary responsibility for childcare and running a home. Some of the description of Viv's lack of spending power is to criticise her twice daily visits to that upmarket supermarket Waitrose. The idea being that it is middle classness which makes her devoted to Waitrose rather than trying less expensive outlets like Lidl and Aldi or, God forbid, Morrison's! The result is that like Mr Magnolia, she has only one boot, or in Viv's case, only one shoe she can wear to work. Failing to stop with one foot uncovered she cuts her foot and it bleeds. She chooses shoes in a shop but her credit card is maxed out. Is Viv's predicament down to her incompetence at economic management or the oppressive rule of entitled men? You decide because you will have decided already. A travellator is used for the motion of scenes where Viv travels to work. The set is three blank spaces, the wall exposed by the drop of the old, worn out curtains and two holes with unseen stairs down. These expanses could be seen as about to suck her into the abyss. I found it easier to appreciate Emma Crowe's poetry off the printed page with no visual or sound distraction and the opportunity to return to re-read. This is not to diminish Katherine Parkinson's outstanding performance but to express my own limitation with the complexity of the stream of Viv's thoughts. Vicky Featherstone directs this play about women struggling with the demands of everyday. "It's incredibly hard isn't it. To try to stay afloat. It's incredibly hard not to sink to the bottom." |
Search CurtainUp in the box below PRODUCTION NOTES Shoe Lady Written by EV Crowe Directed by Vicky Featherstone Starring: Katherine Parkinson With: Tom Kanji, Kayla Meikle, Archer Brandon, Beatrice White Designer: Chloe Lamford Lighting Design: Natasha Chivers Movement Director: Sasha Milavic Davies Running time: 65 minutes without an interval Box Office: 020 7565 5000 Booking to 21st March 2020 Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge based on 10th March 2020 at the Royal Court Sloane Square London SW1W 8AS (Tube: Sloane Square) Index of reviewed shows still running , REVIEW FEEDBACK Highlight one of the responses below and click "copy" or"CTRL+C"
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