Clemmy Manzo
posted 23 March 2007

Is advertising art? Does 'going up in the world' mean selling your soul to the corporate devil? Your profession is your identity…Or is it? In Drew Pautz's play, a lot of questions are asked.

Someone Else's Shoes, directed by Stephen Unwin, opens in the Sistine Chapel, although you would never guess it from the set, which retains a minimalist charm throughout the production. We travel from Rome to New York and Toronto. Interviews, love-making, shoplifting and more takes place, yet the set, with its bright white backdrop, is convincing and effective in its simplicity.

The play tackles issues of ownership, identity and capitalism through five characters whose stories become interlinked as the play unfolds. An artist, Nadine (Emily Bruni), sells all her work she has ever done to Adam Amadeo (Steven Pacey), a rich art dealer, who later becomes her lover, on the understanding that everyone who comes to see her pieces at the gallery remove their shoes. Nadine is furious when this condition isn't met, and once all her art is sold, she feels a part of her is missing and wants it back. We ask ourselves whether she is right to feel so enraged as the question of ownership comes into play: who does the art belong to anyway - the artist who produced it or the collector who bought it? Even Nadine's ex-boyfriend Jed (Jonjo O'Neill) claims to have some ownership over it, as the concept came about during a post-coital chat.

Jed, an unemployed intellectual, gets a job as a shop assistant at Mercury Shoes, a huge multinational store, thanks to Richard Amadeo (Patrick Drury), the brother of the art collector and joint owner of Mercury Shoes. It is not what Jed has always aspired to do, but he needs to make a dent in his rising debts, which are subsequently not helped by a shop lifter named Mary (Denise Gough) who becomes his lover. Mary, an anti-globalisation activist, convinces him to take part in her anti-corporate scheme, which involves blowing up the Mercury store.

Jed gets a lot of stick from Nadine and then Mary for selling out to Mercury Shoes. He would like to live in Mary's world, but thinks it will never happen. Drew Pautz seems to be asking us what it means to better yourself in this world. Can anyone really ever take off their Mercury shoes? Mary's attitude is to 'fight the bastards', but although her struggle comes across as heartfelt, her character is more comical than anything else. Jed on the other hand, seems to think more on the lines of, 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'.

Indeed, 'You can't beat Mercury' is actually the corporate giant's slogan, and as Mercury is also the name of the Roman God of commerce, profit and trade, the idea that everything is for sale is again reiterated. So Mary's hopes are futile and her explosion never goes off, literally and metaphorically. It was doomed to failure from the onset as we all live in a world where art, ideas, and even relationships are for sale, and the ones with the money and the power (the Amadeos of this world) will ensure it stays that way.

Talented performances from Jonjo O'Neil and Denise Gough in particular are a highlight of the evening, as is the punchy script, which regularly induces laughter amongst the audience; however the play's subject relates nothing especially exciting or new and is a little naïve in its worldview.

Till 7 April 2007