Synopsis

A woman’s cluttered bedroom in modern-day London, where the chaos of everyday life threatens to unravel her sanity.

Viv, a frazzled working mother, finds her life spiraling out of control when she loses a shoe on her way to work. What starts as a minor inconvenience quickly becomes a metaphor for her unraveling sense of self and place in the world. As Viv desperately tries to navigate her day with only one shoe, she encounters a series of surreal and darkly comic situations that force her to confront her deepest insecurities about motherhood, marriage, and her professional identity.

Crowe’s play is a sharp, satirical look at the pressures of modern life and the thin line between keeping it together and falling apart. Through Viv’s stream-of-consciousness narration and interactions with an array of characters – from her distant husband Kenny to a homeless woman named Elaine – the play explores themes of class anxiety, consumerism, and the struggle for authenticity in a world that demands constant performance. The play’s structure, moving between Viv’s internal monologue and her external reality, creates a disorienting effect that mirrors her mental state. “Shoe Lady” offers a poignant and often uncomfortably funny examination of a woman on the brink, desperately trying to maintain her footing in a world that seems designed to trip her up.