Toward the end of her rambunctious and profound one-woman show, Ida Cuttler spins back to a recurring theme in the 80-minute production: the power of storytelling to keep women safe. As Cuttler notes, stories kept Scheherazade from being murdered by a rapist king who decreed he’d wed a different woman each night, killing each new bride the morning after the nuptials. Scheherazade is hardly the only woman to use stories to justify her existence and as a means to create boundaries where men believe none exist.
Initially, Comfortable Shoes seems comfortably wacky, an inspired bit of high-octane silliness. Cuttler leaps and gallops around set designer Dominique Zaragoza’s expansive bedsheet fort, supersized to accommodate adult shenanigans, complete with a reveal that’s like a Beach Blanket Bingo-inspired New Year’s Eve balloon drop. As the words ride atop Klocke’s churning melodic current of Rimsky-Korsakov and original compositions, Cuttler pulls the audience in her wake.
Through 11/16: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, the Neo-Futurist Theater, 5153 N. Ashland, 773-878-4557, neofuturists.org, $25 Fri-Sat, $10 students and seniors, pay what you can Thu.
