The Red Shoes

Kids might refuse to wear anything but flip-flops after seeing Kneehigh Theatre’s grim cautionary tale about demonic dance shoes, despite the semihappy ending that adapter-director Emma Rice gives Hans Christian Andersen’s fable. But adults will grit their teeth through the production's campy humor, ghoulish visuals and musical interludes, which suggest a passé pastiche of English panto, Grotowski and vaudeville.—David Cote