RSC Friends

The play begins with a series of amusing freeze-frame dioramas economically introducing the whole cast and the main groupings within it. Speedily the action moves to The shoemaker’s workshop with its volatile and anarchic journeymen, maids and the master’s wife. These diverse characters are held together by David Troughton’s remarkable Simon Eyre, an eccentric but loveable master, who alternately cajoles, begs and threatens his household in order to keep it in being by renewing the bonds of trust and affection that are at its heart. So we begin to understand what is meant by the oft repeated phrase ‘the gentle craft.’

The threats to Eyre’s extended family of artisans comes from the conscription of a shoemaker by the noble recruitment officers, one of whom deserts his military duties to pursue his lover whilst hiding in the shoemaker’s workshop.

This production avoids being a morality play exposing the hypocrisy and malice…