Footloose

Shepard Book from the TV show Firefly once stated “You're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre”. This may seem slightly harsh, but by the end of this performance I completely agreed with the sentiment of this quote and would have happily pushed the women behind me into that pit of hell myself.

This infuriating inhuman person didn’t just sing along with the tunes, that I could have understood and sympathised with. No, rather she insisted on quoting the play behind me as the characters spoke their lines! And furthermore, she didn’t even know the quotes that well, she kept getting them wrong and misquoting and whenever she did that she swore. What kind of insane person does this, if you keep getting the lines wrong and it angers you stop quoting and swearing! Don’t just keep getting it wrong right up until the very end!

Anyway I digress, the show itself was good fun, the actors were talented and full of energy and there was a selection of amusing comments throughout that got a good laugh out of the audience (apart from the lady behind me who was too busy swearing she had misquoted the humourous line). I must admit I found it a hard show to get emotionally invested into. I have never been a great fan of dancing so the feeling that people are getting oppressed by nor being allowed to dance does not greatly move me. Fighting for your right to dance compared to so many other rights that are curtailed across the world is a hard one to radically support. However, they sold the need to fight for this cause quite well and by the end I was sort of on board with it. The songs were very entertaining, there were some real toe tapping numbers throughout and they are left buzzling around in your head afterwards as you leave the theatre which is the sign of a very decent musical.

At the end of the show I looked behind me to see who this infuriating character was who had insisted on quoting along with the show throughout. She was putting her shoes on which she had taken off during the show. She also it seems took off her socks, but slight disturbingly, she chose not to put them back on at the end. She left behind were a pair of grubby socks at the foot of her seat. As I left the show I encountered another moment putting on her shoes and looking for her missing socks. I pointed out there were socks down by that seat but she said that wasn’t hers, hers was black and those were white. So, multiple people in this show were taking not only their shoes off but their socks as well and were leaving them behind. I am so glad I am not an usher at that theatre. But I guess if you want to go see a show with music so powerful it literally knocks your socks off this may right be the show for you. As I still quite enjoyed it I feel if you go without the audience accompaniment I had you’ll certainly have a good time.