Shoes Upon The Table
Shoes upon the Table
When the audience are first introduced to Mrs Lyons, she enters the stage “carrying a parcel”. During the duologue that establishes the setting and some background, the character “begins to unwrap the parcel” and then sets “the contents of the package… on to the table”. This “pair of new shoes” frightens Mrs Johnstone because she believes “you never put new shoes on the table”. Mrs Lyons dismisses this as a silly belief but agrees to “put them away” to make her new cleaner “happier”.
This beat of the story establishes the theme of superstition in the play. To reinforce its importance, the Narrator enters and begins his list of superstitions with “there’s shoes upon the table”. His first song then begins with the lyric “there’s shoes upon the table” and the image is repeated whenever the song is reprised.
Later in the first act, when Mrs Lyons expresses her desire to move house, Mr Lyons “absently bends to pick up a pair of children’s shoes from the floor”. He then “places the shoes on the table”. Mrs Lyons “rushes at the table and sweeps the shoes off”.
With obvious and deliberate echoes of the previous scene, Russell is trying to show the audience how Mrs Lyons is becoming increasingly irrational because of her fear of losing Edward. We can compare and contrast the two moments and see that change very vividly. In the first example, she is “laughing” at the superstitious notion but, in the second, she “rushes” to avoid the bad luck.
In Your Shoes
In Act Two, when Mickey, who is despondent about his unemployment and his inability to properly support his pregnant wife, argues with the “bohemian” Edward about not having a job. Mickey recognises his point of view, saying “if I was in your shoes I’d be the same”. He then repeats the metaphor: “but I’m not in your shoes, I’m in these”.
Their lives and opportunities are becoming increasingly different and the image conveys that effectively because it suggests how they are walking in separate directions.
A Pair
Interestingly, when Mrs Lyons was trying to force Mrs Johnstone into giving up one of her children, she warns “if either twin learns that he was once a pair, they shall both immediately die”. This threat does not relate to the shoe image explicitly, but the word “pair” implies to the audience the boys need each other like matching shoes.
