Fires Our Shoes Have Made - C Aquila - ★★★★

Originally posted to broadwaybaby.com

We are living through a renaissance of plays in verse, and if you need proof I can furnish few better than Fires Our Shoes Have Made by Fringe newcomers Pound of Flesh Theatre. Writer Oscar Sadler’s electric new script is rightly billed as ‘gig theatre’, the latter-day musical of the 21st century, featuring live instruments and sound mixing on stage, along with original music and lyrics by Mollie Tucker. Unlike traditional musicals, and even the defining works of the emerging genre, the songs of Fires Our Shoes Have Made take a backseat to the relentless drive of the story, told primarily by Joe Matty as the thirteen-year-old Jay, entirely in rhyming verse – and if that sounds stodgy and old-fashioned to you, it’s not. Less Shakespeare, more hip-hop.