The question is: what were we doing at Sadler’s Wells?

Sadler’s Wells is where bold, imaginative and thrilling risks are taken – where new dance and dance-theatre forms first appear. But not in this confection of song-and-dance and just-song numbers. There is little compelling choreography; the lyrics by Richard Thomas (composer of Jerry Springer: The Opera) are energetic but, for the most part, uninspiring. Many of the scenes are predictable: Imelda Marcos makes an inevitable appearance, but seems neither comic nor tragic nor greedy nor even particularly obsessed; a shoe fetishist tries to rub in the point, as it were, by appearing to hump a stiletto; shopaholic girls rebuke their boyfriends’ meek request to buy something as good but cheaper with charges of male domination. Though the latter scene bears the ambitious title “The Psychology Of Purchase in The Temple of Retail” neither here nor in most of this show were we sabotaged by some unexpected apercu, whether psychological or otherwise – insight promised by the libretto’s introduction: “…the show’s about life/and the metaphor is shoes”, it tell us.
      The lines can be quite funny – devotion to shoes is “like a religion but without the misogyny - but they are strangely un-edgy. A gaggle of naughty nuns sings what at first sounds like a Mass, but then you hear words like “Jimmy Choo” and glimpse shirts with Vivienne Westwood (I think it was) logos under their habits. A Jesus-like figure in sandals sings about Birkenstocks. Someone skis over the stage to make sure the ski boot isn’t left out. Ditto the flip-flop. And the flipper. Many in the audience found it hilarious, but, as is obvious, much of it left this reviewer cold.
      Scattered within the thirty-odd numbers were a few very good ones. A scene in which a man in Hush Puppies bed-hops between three women has real poetry and poignancy; another charts the curse of wedding shoes in the form of mismatched spouses, unwanted paternity, and other marital misfortunes - cleverly played within a large photo frame of the sort that stands in sterile perpetuity on living-room mahogany tables.
      Four choreographers, led by Stephen Mear (of Mary Poppins and Sweet Charity fame) and including Kate Prince and the superb dance-maker Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, have contributed to the show. The moments of choreographic interest revealed that here were some outstanding dancers – Teneisha Bonner, Drew McOnie, Jo Morris and Aaron Silis among them – whose capabilities were seldom permitted to shine. And the fine singing by Alison Jiear, Kate Miller-Heidke and others was so over-amplified that many of their words were impossible to decipher. Surely this wonderful auditorium has good enough acoustics not to need to ghetto-blast the audience?
      It all took place within an imposing set, centred around a huge stiletto at the top of which sat the band. Video images, among them of shoes teasing and dancing with each other, flashed cleverly on a small screen suspended over the action. The logistics of such a large cast of dancers, singers and musicians were impressive, and the execution was faultless. But we got little sense for what our contemporary (is it just contemporary?) obsession with shoes is really about, what forms it takes, and, above all, what its choreographic possibilities might be.
Simon May