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
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Friends - The Musical Parody at Milton Keynes Theatre

The One Where 2026 starts in a world of confusion. And so, 2026 is upon us and for my first trip to the theatre this year, one of my most significant reviewing challenges was to occur. Touring to Milton Keynes Theatre is Friends - The Musical Parody , based, unsurprisingly, on that little American show that ran to a few audience members for ten years. However, I confess that I was not, and have never been in that audience, never having seen a single episode of the show. However, always up for a review challenge and doing my due diligence by having a Friends superfan as my plus one, I headed to Milton Keynes with anticipation. For those unfamiliar with the show, I could say I can’t help; however, a quick review of some of the information you might need (thanks, Google and my plus one). Running for ten years between 1994 and 2004 with 236 episodes (quiz question, you are welcome), the main characters consisted of Phoebe (ditzy, writer of sad songs), Monica (in possession of an unfeasibly...
Read more

Review of Shrek (NMTC) at Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton

Three and a half years ago, in a land far far away, in a world very different to the one we are now in, I saw the touring professional production of Shrek The Musical , it was a mixed bag of quality, tilted extremely heavily in favour of one particular character (not the one you might expect) and not firing on all cylinders much of the time. One and a half years after my last visit to the Derngate theatre, I return to see the homegrown Northampton Musical Theatre Company's own take on the very same show. Would they be able to breathe more life into the show than the professionals did in that distant land? It is a bit of a yes and no really. Pretty much all of this is done to the best possible standard, and at times, with being an amateur show you could easily forget, they all have normal day jobs. The show oozes professional quality at times. The set looks magnificent, the costumes (from Molly Limpet's Theatrical Emporium) are superb, and as ever with NMTC, the backstage team c...
Read more

Review of Cinderella at Castle Theatre, Wellingborough

So, as December draws in, the world of theatre moves into panto season and first up this year is Castle Theatre’s production of Cinderella , and the deja vu world begins again and we are all crying “He’s behind you” and “Oh no you’re not” etc, etc. Perhaps it is reassuring in a world of change that pantomime land never changes. The jokes might get a little nudge, a few of the characterisations might change a bit, but you all know that we will have a split theatre singalong, a grand wedding at the end and a multitude of stuff you have seen year after year. Unlike many of the bigger theatres around the country, Castle Theatre, presents a pantomime with no “big name” from the showbiz world in sight, just great little stage performers, and how refreshing it is to see. No awkward bolted-on references to a star's normal day job, just more emphasis on fun characters and the usual sly references to the local towns and villages. That, in itself, is great to see. The title character is playe...
Read more