It's been a treat to have Footsbarn performing again in the UK, and the company's joyous and chaotic version of A Midsummer Night's Dream was a reminder of all that British theatre has been missing during this company's long years in exile. So I wish I could feel more enthusiastic about their latest offering, whose title perhaps suggests that even Footsbarn realise that they are serving up something for which there might be a need to apologise.
Created with Cirque Werdyn, a Gypsy horse circus, and played out in a sawdust ring, Sorry! offers a promising scenario in which mourners at a funeral for a musical maestro and the revellers at a rustic wedding find themselves forced to share the same space. Will love defeat death? Is the bottle of wine half full or half empty?
There are some nice moments, including a Footsbarnian interweaving of Shakespeare and real life, and the finale – in which everyone sets sail – is enjoyably climatic, even if it's a climax hardly earned by the company. The trouble is that there is a bit of this (clowning and knife juggling) and a bit of that (fast riding in a tiny ring and a band) but not a great deal that amounts to anything that is coherent and urgent.
Somebody seems to have forgotten to write a plot that hangs together, and while I've often found Footsbarn's default mode of anarchy endearing, here it feels lazy and self-indulgent. Even the actors (on occasion inaudible) are out-performed by the animals, who are the real stars of the show.
