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Cornish foot fetish sets pulses racing
FOOT/MOUTH
Soho Theatre
WITH its nocturnal street life and dazzling city lights, deepest Soho is the perfect host for this pulsating, manic, madcap wonder, which never pauses to rest and could hardly be richer in colour or bigger in imaginative scope.
It’s part of a National Youth Theatre triple bill – and while the actors seem more interesting than your average drama student (and some don’t look all that young either), they are “yoofy” if youth means hyperactivity.
The year is 2025. Like limbs seceding from a rotten corpse, Scotland and Wales have left the UK. Body parts – or more precisely feet – are mysteriously being found washed up on the shores of Cornwall, another independent Celtic state.
The lonely torso of England, meanwhile, groans under the yoke of a brutal dictatorship (something to do with the recession and the Conservative election victory of 2010, we are informed).
In Cornwall, people rarely speak in the traditional sense; most conversations take place online, with techies hooking themselves up to the internet so that their every word appears somewhere in the blogosphere. In England, the internet is banned, everyone speaks an incomprehensible kind of Newspeak, and the use of words not in the sanctioned “canary” (official dictionary) is outlawed.
After the Cornish police prove themselves incapable of solving the feet mystery, a crack team of Cornishmen and women infiltrate England to rescue an abducted writer. Utter carnage ensues.
Scene for scene, Foot/Mouth is inspired and funny, borrowing from and parodying numerous genres. One minute you are watching the enormous cast wreak havoc in a stylised shoot ‘em up; the next, you are being treated to a stirring rendition of Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World. It takes itself none too seriously and is all the better for it. And, unexpectedly, it actually works.
This wild creation seems to have jumped straight onto the stage from the mind of a chronically over-excited teenager who has forgotten to take his Ritalin. Brilliant. Highly recommended.
Until September 10
020 7478 0100 |
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