Boots at the Bunker Theatre is affectingly done but tries to pack in too much to its short running time
“The walk to the tills afterwards was like I was the Christmas tree and he’d just turned the fairy lights on”
Sacha Voit and Jessica Butcher’s Boots was seen as the VAULT Festival last year, so it’s rather neat that a new incarnation of the play opens at the Bunker Theatre while this year’s festival is running, a sign of the progress possible for all those theatre companies plugging away under the arches of Waterloo.
Directed by Nadia Papachronopoulou, Boots is an affecting and effective two-hander which probes interestingly at intergenerational friendships. Tanya Loretta Dee’s Willow and Amanda Boxer’s Liz meet at a Boots pharmacy counter as Liz applauds Willow’s tirade against a misogynistic customer. And from there, something grows.
I don’t want to say too much more but there is a sense that Voit and Butcher could have benefited from a tighter edit as they cover so much ground here that it is hard to do all of these weighty subjects the justice they deserve. Rape and racism, fertility problems and death, ageing and depression, the issues come thick and fast and need more room to breathe.
