Mr Foote's Other Leg
By
Ian Kelly
Perruques And Prosthetics
You couldn't make it up - an actor-manager and
satirical playwright Samuel Foote should surely have been a character in one of
his own plays. Running with a fast and ruthless upper class crowd, including
the future George III and his brother the Duke of York, Foote loses his leg
taking on a bet. Yet he made a comeback as a one-legged thespian with the apt singular
surname worthy of the celebrated Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch which his story may have inspired.
And there's an amputation scene, strenuous but not unduly bloody, yet TLT did wonder whether Mr Clint Eastwood or
Mr James Caan might want to take on
the role for an American production ...
Ian Kelly adapted his own biography of Foote into the play
"Mr Foote's Other Leg", now transferred from a sell-out run at the Hampstead Theatre to its natural home at the
Theatre Royal Haymarket. For Samuel Foote, played in this production by Simon
Russell Beale with Kelly striking as his patron Prince George, operated from the Little Theatre In The Hay
with a Royal Patent in the 18th century, a forerunner of the current venue.
In addition, he managed to evade the licensing and script
censorship of the Lord Chamberlain
by claiming amateur status for his company, charging for tea or chocolate at
his "tea parties" rather than audience tickets and performing
improvisations including his own drag acts.
TLT and her horse powered carriage was particularly
intrigued by the theatrical premise of the play, having discovered the torrid
rivalries of official and unofficial theatre companies doing research for her review of The Beaux Stratagem.
And sure enough the play does encompass rivalries
between Foote the comedian and David Garrick the tragedian (a finely judged
performance by Joseph Millson), the competition from opera and Hanoverian import G F Handel and the rise of
the pleasure garden entertainment.
Alongside themes emerging from Foote's possibly ambiguous sexuality, his
relationship with his leading actress Peg Woffington (Dervla Kirwan), his
surgeon John Hunter (Forbes Masson), his Jamaican dresser Frank Barber (Micah
Balfour) and scientist and American
statesman Benjamin Franklin (Colin Stinton). Not forgetting Foote's big theatrical break after the manslaughter of actor Mr Hallam (Joshua Elliott).
Past and modern literary, light entertainment,
historical and current affairs parallels punch well beyond the 18th century
into our present day. But it's the gamut
of themes, allusions and characters, each worthy of their own play, which
proved problematic for us.
The play is directed at a filmic lively pace by Richard
Eyre with sumptuous design and costumes by Tim Hatley.
Russell Beale holds the play
together as best as he can, but it did
feel like a skate through heterogenous elements of several plays and then some
alternative comedy yoked self-consciously together rather than an organic whole.
Perhaps there's a clue in the mention of Laurence
Sterne's shaggy dog story Tristam Shandy but the play lost its focus for TLT
and her sidekick. The night time search after Foote's death for
his amputated leg among the pickled relicts of medical student curiosities
never fulfilled its initial promise of concentrating on Foote, the man exchanging the law for the stage yet embroiled
in a complex web of interests including his own.
Nevertheless TLT did catch some more thought
provoking strands such as Miss Chudleigh, a pleasingly cast Sophie Bleasdale
stepped fresh out of a Gainsborough portrait. First an ingenue actress and then a cackling
villainess - at least as filtered through Foote's viewpoint as we never hear
her side of the story. But such possible
complexities never reach an apex and are easily missed.
So an intriguing story and although there are glimpses of
something darker drawing modern parallels, the play pulls in too many directions
despite the best efforts of actors, including a distinctive performance by the
playwright himself, director and crew. An amber light.
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