The Red Shoes

PressUK · **Joined:** Thu Jul 19, 2001 11:01 pm **Posts:** 158

The Red Shoes
By Benedict Nightingale for The Times

FORGET the sweetly sad film Michael Powell made in 1948. Ditch the memory of Moira Shearer self-destructing through the claims of love and ballet. The show Cornwall’s enterprising Kneehigh Company brought last year to the Battersea Arts Centre, and are now reprising in Hammersmith, owes a lot more to Hans Andersen and the traditions of rough theatre — but also something to political correctness.
A majestic panto dame, relevant because he/she embodies the unconventional freedoms Emma Rice’s production is promoting, oversees the revels of four figures dressed in grimy vests and pants. They all look innocent, woebegone, helpless, abject, but Bec Applebee’s Girl more so, which is important, as she doesn’t exactly decide to put on red shoes and dance in church.

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Joanne · **Posted:** Tue Oct 01, 2002 2:54 am

Review in The Telegraph.

Quote:

Those who like their theatre slick, polished and thoroughly professional will have a bad time at The Red Shoes, an adaptation of one of the cruellest of Hans Christian Andersen's folk tales. The staging, by Cornwall's Kneehigh company, is unashamedly rough and ready, the dramatic equivalent of lo-fi music, in which sincerity and inventiveness are valued above a sleek, flawless sheen.

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