It’s a rare treat to see the inner machinations of a creative’s mind willingly and generously exposed on stage in all their beauty, absurdity and darkness. Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes, now showing at Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney in a co-production with Malthouse Theatre and Black Swan State Theatre Company, does just that.
The show opens with our unwilling, uninspired showgirl, dragging herself (or rather, being dragged) into the spotlight for yet another opening number. She’s lost her muse and the will to perform for the amusement of others. But dance she will and dance she must. And so, she does as she recounts the story of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes – albeit her own version.
If you haven’t read it (I advise you to do so before seeing the show), The Red Shoes tells the story of Karen, a young girl who becomes obsessed with a pair of beautiful red shoes.
Once she puts them on, vanity turns to torment as the shoes force her to dance endlessly. Desperate for freedom, she begs for her feet to be cut off. In the end, hobbled, humbled and repentant, she finds peace only in death.
There has been much speculation over the deeper meanings of this rather macabre and cruel tale. It is believed the girl was modelled on Andersen’s loathed half-sister, Karen Marie Andersen.
The story was inspired by a childhood memory of Andersen’s shoemaker father destroying a pair of shoes after a wealthy customer criticised his work, saying he had ruined her silk. To which he replied, “In that case, I may as well spoil my leather too,” and cut up the shoes in front of her.
In Meow Meow’s version, with the help of the incredible talents of her three-man stagehands-come-musicians-come-supporting-actors, Mark Jones, Dan Witton and Jethro Woodward, she weaves a multilayered, multi-faceted, intertextually rich tale. One that invokes delight, despair, hilarity and sentimentality.
Out of her fridge full of thought embryos springs the author himself, brilliantly played by operatic tenor Kanen Breen. Together they take the audience on a journey of sensory overload into an almost ecstatic state. They then hit us with politics, philosophy and a better version of the story.
The show is beautifully staged and directed by Black Swan’s Artistic Director, Kate Champion. Amidst a heap of garbage that represents the showgirl’s pile of broken dreams and unrealised ambitions, the cast, ‘crew,’ instruments and stage props themselves become part of the dance until death.
Meow Meow intersperses strong character moments with hilarious audience participation and very real, unmasked asides. The result is a show that speaks to truth, beauty and pain all at once.
Ultimately, we’re left feeling that perhaps the young girl, and the many out there like her, would have been better served by some human understanding and compassion than pain, humiliation and death.
Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes closes out with a haunting rendition of Patrick Watson’s Here Comes the River. After all the chaos and madness, it leaves the audience with the cathartic sigh of a journey well-travelled, having witnessed a true artist in her element.
Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes runs to 9 November at the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills NSW 2010.
It tours to Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre from 19 November – 6 December. It will then run at Perth’s Black Swan Theatre from 26 February – 1 March 2026.
Tickets: https://my.belvoir.com.au/overview/13843
Website: https://belvoir.com.au/productions/meow-meows-the-red-shoes/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/belvoirst/
Photo credits: Brett Boardman
