Enfilade

Joseph Millson as David Garrick, Dervla Kirwan as Peg Woffington, and Simon Russell Beale as Samuel Foote; Mr Foote’s Other Leg, directed by Richard Eyre, Hampstead Theatre, London. Credit: Alastair Muir.

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Ian Kelly’s biography of Samuel Foote made Enfilade’s 2012 year-end gift guide. The eponymous play, Mr Foote’s Other Leg, has just moved to Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Writing for The Guardian, Michael Billington finds in it “a ramshackle vigour” with “a shining performance from Simon Russell Beale” as Foote. Reviewing the play while it was at the Hampstead Theatre, Sussanah Clap, also writing for The Guardian, found much to enjoy, singling out (among others) Dervla Kirwan: she “is enchanting—frilly and filthy—as Peg Woffington, in ‘breeches’ roles.” And here’s the beginning of Jane Shilling’s piece for The Telegraph (5 November 2015). . .

It is curious that the reputation of Samuel Foote should be almost forgotten when so many of his less amusing 18th-century contemporaries are still remembered. A one-legged actor-manager with a fondness for appearing in extravagant female costume and a dangerous talent for satire, Foote bestrode (or rather, hopped commandingly across) the stage of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket—the venue to which Richard Eyre’s production of Ian Kelly’s play has transferred after a sell-out premiere at the Hampstead Theatre.

Kelly, who appears in his own play as the future King George III, published a biography of Foote in 2012, but evidently felt that his subject’s natural milieu was the stage rather than the page. His adaptation is a wild, picaresque romp through the theatrical,
social and scientific landscape of the 18th century. . . .

The full review is available here»