Foote fault

Samuel Foote (1720–77) was a star of the 18th-century stage who avoided the censors by extemporising his performances. Today we’d call him a stand-up comedian specialising in improv. He served tea to play-goers and claimed that the show was a free accompaniment to the beverages. Dogged by homosexual scandals, he was hounded out of England at least once despite the patronage of George III. A riding accident left him with a compound leg fracture (bone piercing flesh), which required amputation to prevent gangrene. The limb was hacked off in 20 minutes. Foote hobbled back to fame and fortune playing Sir Luke Limp in The Lame Lover. At his burial the preserved limb was reunited with its owner.

This is the great comic biography the 18th century never gave us and the actor Ian Kelly, spotting an opportunity, has written a book on which this play is based. The show is half-brilliant. We meet Foote as a teenager taking acting lessons backstage from a leading star. (Actors earned pennies coaching hopefuls during breaks between performances.) His fellow pupil David Garrick first appears as a young bumpkin from Lichfield with Ozzy Osbourne vowels and he later becomes the darling of Drury Lane and acquires a cut-glass accent. Foote and Garrick form a partnership with Irish beauty Peg Woffington but they argue over scripts and genres. Foote loves unpretentious fun whereas Garrick is devoted to high art and virtuoso interpretations of Shakespeare. When Foote mounts a comic version of Garrick’s acclaimed Othello the two thesps, both in costume, come to blows backstage. They wallop their blackened fists into their blackened faces while their curly wigs fly in all directions. The bout is watched in mock-terror by Foote’s dresser, Frank Barber, a Jamaican.