Blogs

Whatsonstage.com Club Outing to Shoes

| London's West End |

7 September 2010

Over 50 Whatsonstage.com theatregoers made their way across London in spite of the striking Tube to see Shoes at Sadler’s Wells last night. The ‘dance revue’ was a bit of a departure from the mixture of straight plays and musicals that the outings normally attend, but with a score by Richard Thomas, the composer of Jerry Springer – The Opera and direction and choreography by Stephen Mear, whose work has recently been seen in the West End production of Sweet Charity, we were certainly in safe hands.

Exploring mankind – or more accurately womankind’s – relationship with footwear I found the two hours flew by, teaching me an awful lot about shoes on the way. And what a way to learn, the show combined the work of a number of choreographers including Aletta Collins, choreographer of Jesus Christ Superstar, and Kate Prince, the director and founder of ZooNation – the company behind Sondheim street dance re-imagining, Into the Hoods.

The mixture of styles and shoes made the entire piece very fun to watch and to mix the dance with such strong voices really was a treat. From the man who composed Jerry Springer – The Opera, it should not have been a surprise that some of the songs were brilliant, combining poppy songs with catchy choruses and some fantastic operatic belting. To hear them sung by voices like Olivier award-nominated Alison Jiear and bestselling artist Kate Miller-Heidke was also a treat.

Following the show Mear and Thomas joined Terri Paddock, Whatsonstage.com’s editorial director on stage for a lively Q&A about the piece, which they are hoping will move into the West End’s Peacock Theatre for a six to nine week run, followed by a tour sometime late next year. Richard Thomas particularly kept the Q&A lively, and a podcast of the entire session is available to download from the news section of the site and the Whatsonstage.com radio page.

Please do feel free to email your comments and thoughts about the play, as well as any photos you have of the event and the evening through to feedback@whatsonstage.com , we love to hear from you.

Thanks for joining us for this event, it was a pleasure to meet more of our theatregoers on my second outing, and I am very much looking forward to our Outing to Design for Living at the Old Vic next week. Do check the homepage to keep up to date on all of our upcoming Outings.

– Andrew Girvan