Footloose

>Maddermarket Theatre

This is the first production by a new, local professional theatre company based in Norwich. Appropriately enough, they're called: Norwich Theatre Company. And their initial offering, a two-hander, set in a reflexologists surgery, set them off on an entertaining, if slightly soporific, note. This was the kind of material you might comfortably snooze to on Radio four after a rather heavy lunch.

Not that the concept wasn't original: Footlloose explored a person's psyche by looking at their feet! A quirky idea, which made for schizophrenic staging, as reality split between what was said and what was thought.

The strongest moment for me was a semi interior monologue by patient, Laura (Chloe Burt) where she talked about the freedom of diving into a pool and her love of water.

Clearly, this was a character who hated to be earth bound, a bit of a mermaid on the quiet.

But it's hard to say how dramatic it actually was to watch somebody's feet being massaged on and off for forty minutes. I yearned for something to happen. And perhaps this struck playwright Michael Stanislaw as well, since his closing line was words to the effect of - it's easy to talk, it's what I do that matters. In my view, this is where it all should have started.