April 6: The Red Shoes

Today for Theatre class, we went to see a play in Battersea called "The Red Shoes." To get there, we had to take the tube to Victoria, then a train to Clapham, then walk to Battersea Arts Center. It was worth it. The play was based on Hans Christian Andersen's story about a girl who wears a sinful pair of red shoes to church and is cursed to dance in them forever. It's a pretty dark story, and ends with the girl cutting off her feet to stop the dancing. She gets a pair of wooden feet, but the red shoes with her cut off feet in them won't stop dancing in front of her. In the end I think and angel comes and somehow she kind of dies and goes to Heaven, but at least she's happy and not dancing. It's not exactly a nice sort of fairy tale, but the production was really, really good. This adaptation of it was weird as all heck but I really liked it. It was very different and strange but still fun and the actors danced and played instruments as well and they were amazing. I'm just crossing my fingers I don't get nightmares!