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 Broken Party at The Benn Hall, Rugby

Broken Party , now on stage at The Benn Hall, is the first production by the new theatre company Nerve Theatre. Written and directed by company founder Mia Ballard, it provides an impressive collection of twists and turns that will please thriller enthusiasts. The story setup sees a gathering of the Lewis family to celebrate the birthday of Abigail. She is the daughter of Ann Lewis and the leading player, James, a high-flying lawyer who sets his stall out in the world as a supporter of the victims of society. However, as events unravel due to a television interview, is he the worthy man many believe him to be? Ballard's script is a perfect smorgasbord of murder mystery aperitifs, a dinner party, and a collection of the most dislikeable individuals, each of whom is the ideal culprit for guilt. The story is told in a single-location living room with little distraction and sees the Lewis family spar against one another following a somewhat awkward viewing of a TV show. The dialogue fr...
Read more

Review of The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband at The Playhouse Theatre, Northampton

During the interval of The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband , last weeks production at The Playhouse Theatre Northampton, I got involved in a conversation between a couple sitting next to me. The lady was very much of the opinion that the play was a comedy, while the gentleman, had formed one that it was a tragedy. They were joking of course in the conversation, but it did highlight the differences that Debbie Isitt's dark comedy might have between the sexes. And also now perhaps the passing of time. When this was written in the nineties, Isitt's play was a forthright feminist play, heralding the championing over of the ladies over the man. One the ex-wife plotting to cook him, the other, the new lover, potentially already very tired of him after just three years. The husband, Kenneth (Jem Clack) elopes initially in pursuit of sex with Laura (Diane Wyman), after his nineteen years of marriage with Hilary (Corinna Leeder) has become tired and passionless. Then later, he elopes ...
Read more

Review of Kinky Boots (N.M.T.C.) at Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton

The musical Kinky Boots is perhaps the perfect show for the homegrown theatre group Northampton Musical Theatre Company to perform with the very core of the story bred within this very county. The tale of of Charlie Price and his encounter and unlikely partnership with a certain Lola is based on a true story of factory W. G. Brooks Ltd and the owner Steve Pateman. Back in 1999 his story of men and their wearing of shoes for women featured on a BBC documentary and this in turn inspired the 2005 film, Kinky Boots . Finally, in 2012, this musical adaptation of the story hit the stage, with a book by Harvey Fierstein and songs written by Cyndi Lauper. Longtime readers of my blog with good memories may remember that five years ago I reviewed the opening of the UK professional tour of Kinky Boots , also at the Royal & Derngate. While I enjoyed the show, I didn't give it the most favourable review. Five years on, and a second viewing, have I warmed to the charms of Charlie and Lola...
Read more