Review: Dancing Shoes – Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Stephen Christopher and Graeme Smith’s Dancing Shoes is possibly one of the most surprisingly uplifting shows you’ll see all year if you’re lucky enough to get a ticket. A play about recovering substance abusers doesn’t suggest a barrel of laughs perhaps, but this production is touching, heartwarming and very, very funny, so writes Sass MacDonald for theQR.co.uk…

Heather Grace Currie’s set design is spare – mainly just five plastic chairs set out in a semi-circle – but versatile enough to apparently transform into a posh sitting room and a nightclub in Freshers’ Week. The backdrop provides exits and entrances and one of the only props – a brilliantly utilised standard lamp – is inspired. Hats off to either Currie or lighting director Renny Robertson for that cute wee touch.

I’m assuming Currie is responsible for the costumes too – they do the job excellently and we feel we know exactly who the characters are as a result. And yet the script points out that no matter how hard we try, we are so often judged by who people think we are and, behind the humour, there are a lot of very serious points.

Choreographer Jack Webb, not surprisingly, deserves a huge round of applause: the show is called Dancing Shoes after all. The staging is not expansive here and yet there is room, through very thoughtful choreography, to embrace everything from the first shy, tentative dance steps right through to a full-on display of terpsichorean flamboyance. It’s not just the physical space that’s been taken into account here, but the psychological and emotional spaces too.

Actors at the top of their game

It’s to the three actors – Stephen Docherty (Donny), Lee Harris (Craig) and Craig McLean (Jay) – under director Brian Logan – that my highest praise goes. The script is so, so clever and the set, lighting and costumes support the action, but the three actors are funny, engaging and totally believable. Breaking of the fourth wall works perfectly here and engages the audience from the start. We believe in them all and can readily accept the stories they are telling. The bickering and banter feel natural and there is empathy for each of the characters, let down and letting down others in their attempts to rejoin a society that doesn’t seem to want to give them a second chance.

Dance, Humour, and a serious Heart

Dancing, of course, plays a major role and Stephen Docherty is tremendous, often in a very understated way and yet shining throughout. Harris and McLean come over as likeable rogues – but their stories are affecting and the issues being explored are serious ones. I found Harris’s more serious soliloquies very moving, heart-rending, and for me they were the very heart of the play. Without them the play would have been more farce than social comment.

My only misgiving is that the humour throughout the play masks some of this seriousness and I was saddened it was sometimes met with laughter from the audience – more of a reflection on the audience than the play’s content, perhaps.

There are, rightly, support resources offered for those affected by the issues raised in the play. I’m afraid much of the audience the night I saw Dancing Shoes might not see the need.

Go and see it and see what you think.

Featured Image: Dancing Shoes by Stephen Christopher & Graeme Smith. Image – Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Dancing Shoes will run at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Saturday, the 20th of December, 2025. For tickets or more information, click here.