Review: Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes at Malthouse Theatre

Review by Liz Baldwin

Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes, playing at Malthouse Theatre, is a perplexing production. It is, in many ways, technically brilliant—perhaps even dazzling. But for all its ingenuity and polish, it never quite locates its soul.

This is the third major Meow Meow vehicle to appear at Malthouse, following The Little Match Girl in 2011 and Little Mermaid in 2016. Its ostensible inspiration is Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes. After being adopted by a wealthy woman, an orphaned child is given a pair of red shoes that she loves and wears to church, despite being told they’re inappropriate. As punishment for her vanity, the shoes are enchanted and doom her to dance forever, while she becomes frantic with exhaustion and desperation to break the curse.

This adaptation, directed by Kate Champion, opens with three musicians – Mark Jones, Dan Witton, and musical director Jethro Woodward – positioning their pianos, ready to start a show. But the star is missing. They scratch their heads and look around. Finally, Meow Meow is dragged, literally, on stage, and opens the show from a supine pose. 

It’s a funny, visually arresting scene, among many funny, visually arresting moments on stage. But the production never develops a throughline of any sort. Meow Meow plays a showgirl experiencing some kind of profound personal crisis. The muses have dried up, and she rages against the story of The Red Shoes. But the vagueness of her concerns undermines their power. Is she trying to draw our attention to the arts business? Capitalism? The climate crisis? The cruelty of foundational folk tales? It’s all of the above, and so it’s none of the above.

What is unequivocal is the splendour of the production. Every technical element shines. The musicians are skilled and versatile, covering many instruments and styles, and playing off Meow Meow’s mercurial moods. The set, designed by Dann Barber, is dominated by a pile of rubbish in one corner, evoking both excess and decay. It’s a striking image. Lighting, by Rachel Burke, further adds to the sense of unreal dreamscape. 

Meow Meow, as always, is a formidable presence. Her voice is astonishing: warm and velvety one moment, acid-sharp the next. Her command of the room is total; she can deflate an audience with a raised eyebrow, then re-inflate it with a belt-note or a perfectly tossed ad lib. This show is undoubtedly, distinctively, hers. 

Kanen Breen plays Hans Christian Andersen, and other roles. His versatility is also impressive, singing Meow Meow’s inchoate ideas (from the rejected rubbish pile) with impressive physical comedy, then transforming into an authoritative and surly Hans Christian Andersen.

Yet none of these elements cohere into a larger emotional arc. The tenuous link to The Red Shoes never crystallises into metaphor; the crisis at the show’s core remains more decorative than revelatory. One leaves impressed but faintly unfulfilled. The production feels like a sumptuous vessel in search of a centre.

Image Credit: Brett Boardman