A fairytale but not as you know it at the Gate
Charming yet spooky, the Gate’s latest mixes song and dance with a witty dash of macabre
The Red Shoes Gate Theatre, until January 27 Date ★★★★★
Hans Andersen’s original stern tale about Karen, the orphan with the red shoes, has a fairly simple moral: vanity and a consuming desire for material pleasures bring death to the soul, and salvation may involve having your legs chopped off.
This modern version by Nancy Harris sees Karen (beautifully played and danced by Stephanie Dufresne), the victim of a hypocritical stepmother, trying to express herself through a repressed love of life and dance – sin and salvation don’t come into it; finding who and what you are is the important thing, but en route, Karen still has her problems, although the serious stuff never gets in the way of the fun.
The production is a roistering, witty cross between scarifying satire, pantomime, Little Orphan Annie and Cinderella with a touch of the Wizard Of Oz. There’s gloom mixed with deliciously wicked black humour and the exceptional presentation of director Selina Cartmell and choreographer Liz Roche. But the spookiness would probably be too much for children under eight.
Owen Roe and Marion O’Dwyer are a super comic double act as Karen’s adoptive new parents Bob and Mariella Nugent. Bob is a developer and would-be magician; for his social-climbing
wife, adopting Karen is her route to the upper ranks of the prestigious orphan foundation. Their son is a hatchet-wielding weirdo who likes chopping things up. Animal heads decorate the wall and join in the with the singing of the birds. David Pearse is the narrator, the maker of the magic shoes and the priest who doesn’t want to get too involved, charging nothing for his services but never turning down a contribution.
The reaffirming Snow-Whitestyle magic mirror never gives you bad news about yourself. A couple of the dance sequences are exceptional, especially the great ball with its character list that might have come out of Alice In Wonderland, at which Karen meets Prince, named after a certain singer. And Karen’s initial performance with her red shoes is a hoot.
It’s a big flaw that the story takes a long time to decide which direction it’s finally going. The finale sequence is visually charming but it needs pruning and a sharper ending. Prince’s song sung by Paul Mescal, is witty and worthwhile, but some of the others just sound like time-fillers, including that by the servant Mags (Rosaleen Linehan) that spells out her predicament too bluntly for a show like this.
‘The finale sequence is visually charming but it needs pruning and a sharper ending’