Review: Dancing Shoes, Traverse Theatre

Dancing Shoes is a joy to watch. Donny (Stephen Docherty), Craig (Lee Harris), and Jay (Craig McLean) strike up a friendship at a community support group where they’re each seeking to free themselves from various addictions. While they’ve all made it over the threshold, some more reluctantly than others, the challenge is to figure out what’s going to keep them all there. One day, Donny shares his secret joy in dancing alone in his bedroom. This revelation eventually leads them down a path that will first test, then strengthen their friendship – and their sense of who they are becoming as they free themselves from addiction.

Stephen Christopher and Graeme Smith’s writing has a particular strength in finding the absurd in the mundane: “We dinnae ken why they call it Meeting Room 1…,” begins Craig. “…There’s only one meeting room” finishes Jay, introducing the space where he, Craig and Donny first meet. The lively double-act patter between Craig and Jay is tempered by Donny’s vulnerability: his many attempts to get through the door before he actually sits through his first meeting, his shy overtures at friendship. Docherty imbues Donny with a dignity that forms the emotional heart of the narrative; Harris is the trio’s conscience, and McLean its cheeky, get-away-with-anything id.

The show is delivered with many metatextual asides to the audience, including an early reveal of Donny’s titular dancing shoes – the ruby-red dazzlers that are his eventual salvation – because, he says, he feels more confident with them on and they take absolutely ages to get into (punctuating this with passive-aggressive backstage noises when forced by the others to go take them off). There’s a recurring theme about not relying on ‘backstory’ as a rationale for addictive behaviour, which keeps the story anchored in the time since the trio first met. We must take these characters as they are now, not how they got here.

There are dark moments, yes, including two speed-chases across town to prevent Donny from relapsing, and a heart-rending conflict with Craig when the other two break a promise to him, having left one addiction behind only to find themselves chasing another (social media influencer fame). But the show’s focus is very much on joy, delivered both through the witty script and the wonderful high-energy choreography provided by Jack Webb. At its culmination, we see Donny rejecting his negative self-beliefs while also breaking with some manipulative behaviour on the part of his newfound friends: this is not a simplistic narrative of recovery, but it is one of forgiveness forging stronger bonds. And, as it promises in the title, there is plenty of stage time for dancing.

With minimalist yet graceful efficiency, designer Heather Grace evokes Meeting Room 1, Donny’s lush home, and a nightclub stage, aided by director L Brian Logan’s staging and Renny Robertson’s lighting design to make each space distinctive.

While Dancing Shoes would be a superb piece of theatre at any time of year, it’s a welcome feel-good alternative for those who might be seeking respite from relentless, inescapable holiday spirit everywhere else. The core message that we should not conform to the expectations of others but chart our own course towards joy is much-needed. Go along if you can: you’ll certainly emerge feeling like dancing.

Producers: Traverse Theatre Company in association with A Play, A Pie & A Pint
Writers: Stephen Christopher & Graeme Smith
Director: L Brian Logan
Designer: Heather Grace Currie
Lighting Designer: Renny Robertson
Choreographer: Jack Webb
Stage Manager: Katie Edmundson
Assistant Director – A Play, A Pie & A Pint: Olivia Millar-Ross

Dancing Shoes plays at Traverse Theatre until Saturday 20 December.