Skip to main content

Camden Fringe Review: FEET by Emma And Lawrence Wrote A Play at Etcetera Theatre, London

While some issue plays tend to miss the point of providing fun and entertainment as well as making their point on a relevant issue, FEET is certainly not one of them. Written, produced, directed and performed by the two-person team of Emma And Lawrence Wrote A Play, this is clearly a labour of love of the two, full names Emma Brown and Lawrence Smith, it is fun and engaging throughout.

It's "issue" is loosely about selling your body for money or art and how far you might be willing to push it. Lucy Winwood (Emma Brown) is your typical young actress, struggling hard to get those money making roles, or roles in general, and in need of money she stumbles upon the world of feet fetishism (as you, of course, would) and slowly from just images of her feet sold online, it becomes feet in jelly and then finally personal meetings with clients for full on feet interaction.

The path that FEET takes is that is this denigration of your body in selling your feet actually worse than performing a theatre role that involves full frontal nudity? It is an intriguing idea and it leaves Lucy at odds with her, frankly not very nice, boyfriend Ben (Lawrence Smith) and raises some interesting moral ideas. FEET treats this though in an unpreaching and fun way, creating likeable and interesting scenarios amid its slight weirdness. Touching on a neat spin on the increasing modern trend of revenge porn as well, leaves it an increasingly clever play.

Performance wise it is great, with Emma excellent in her single role, exuding fun and realism in this oddly developing lifestyle, while Lawrence is much better in his roles of the clients (surprisingly portrayed as very normal people at times, which perhaps there are? We all have our quirks, so as long as they are legal?). I did feel at times that his playing was much less impressive and tended to be unconvincing a little.

As a play, it is great fun but loses out being excellent from its curious over-reliance of prerecorded audio, including several minutes at the start of the play. These pieces are meant to be the thoughts of the character, and while their responses by the actor to these pieces are clever, the excessive use is too much and these thoughts could happily have been vocally performed live by the cast.

However, FEET remains a lovely piece of theatre which thouroughly delights while telling its morally challenging idea and deserves a much longer run than just the two performances it garnered at Camden Fringe.

⋆⋆⋆½

Performance reviewed: Friday 11th August at Etcetera Theatre, Camden Town, LondonFEET was performed during the Camden Fringe at Etcetara Theatre between Thursday 10th and Friday 11th August.
For further details about FEET visit them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FEETtheplay  or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FeetThePlay

Popular posts from this blog

Review of War Horse at Milton Keynes Theatre

Michael Morpurgo's novel War Horse was published in 1982. While it was highly regarded and thought to be his best work, perhaps it eventually came to most people's attention when this striking play stormed the stage, thanks to the National Theatre, back in 2007. Now, War Horse arrives at Milton Keynes Theatre as part of another vast UK tour. Adapted by Nick Stafford in association with the award-winning Handspring Puppet Company, War Horse tells the story of the First World War through the eyes of one horse, Joey, sold for a record price from a family battle but eventually shipped off to war-torn France much to the distress of his original owner, 16-year old Albert. The sprawling and epic story should take some staging, but the vast cast, beautiful structure, stunning folk music and, of course, what this play has become known for, magnificent puppetry, all bring the story to life. This production, directed by Tom Morris and revival director Katie Henry, is a magnificent thin...

Review of Immune by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

The cover note for the script of Oladipo Agboluaje's Immune describes it as "a challenging science fiction play with a large cast", and the word challenging in this case is not a lie. This is a fast paced, multi-cast changing script which leaves little room for error for its young cast in the performance. If the script isn't enough to handle for the young performers, director Christopher Elmer-Gorry and designer Carl Davies have made the situation even more complex for the actors with the set and stage work. Having to manhandle great panels on wheels and a huge cube, which also splits in two occasionally, during scene changes requires skill, coordination and cooperation of a high level. As if all this is not enough, the actual story is epic enough for the relatively small stage of the Royal. Attempting to form an apocalyptic world (albeit only happening in Plymouth) offers challenges in itself, but Agboluaje's script does that in a sort of apocalypse in the teac...

Review of The Rocky Horror Show at Milton Keynes Theatre

Richard O’Brien’s anarchic, surreal, and often incomprehensible musical, The Rocky Horror Show , has captivated audiences for over fifty years now. With this new tour, it feels as fresh and unpredictable as if it had just emerged from O’Brien's vivid imagination yesterday. While another review might seem unnecessary given the countless dressed-up fans who fill every theatre it visits, let’s go ahead and write one anyway. The Rocky Horror Show follows the adventures of Brad and Janet, a newly engaged couple. On a dark and stormy November evening, they run into car trouble and seek refuge at a mysterious castle reminiscent of Frankenstein’s. There, they encounter the eccentric handyman Riff-Raff, the outrageous scientist Dr. Frank N. Furter, and a host of other bizarre characters. What unfolds is a science fiction B-movie narrative that is at times coherent and at other times bewildering — yet somehow, that doesn’t seem to matter. I first saw The Rocky Horror Show in 2019 and exper...