Set mostly in the 1940s, “Love is Afoot!” is a musical romantic comedy that explores the subject of discrimination from a unique perspective- loving from the knee down!

At its core, it’s a love story about two childhood sweethearts and their struggle to be together.  Adapted from the award-winning short film, “F,” “Love Is Afoot!” chronicles the life and times of Joe Smoot-Nibley and his journey for love and acceptance. He’s a hopeless romantic in love with the girl of his dreams… and more specifically, her sweet feet. That girl is Rose Marie Pedals, and it was love at first sniff and tickle the moment they met at Joe’s shoeshine stand.  

Rose Marie is beautiful inside and out. She loves, adores, and understands Joe’s desires because she actually has her own “thing” for feet herself, plus she’s obsessed with shoes- lots of shoes.  But because it’s a forbidden love and being from different economic and social classes they are pulled apart again and again, mostly by Renita, Rose Marie’s nanny/housekeeper, who’s keeping a few secrets of her own.   

Giving in to pressures from her peers and family to do the right thing, Rose Marie ends up unhappily married to the rich, popular jock, Buzz Nelson, leaving Joe to settle down with a true beast of a woman named, Millie Liskusky, who treats Joe like dirt.  Millie’s only redeeming quality is the extra toe she has on each of her oversized feet.  But twelve toes aren’t enough to make up for the ten that got away.

Joe is miserable. He ends up taking a job at a sock-factory working for Millie’s abrasive, stubby little father, Mr. Liskusky. Joe is excited to be working with “digits” until he learns that that the digits, he’ll be working with, are invoice numbers in accounting. Joe just can’t catch a break.

However, it’s with help and sage advice from a magical Italian shoe cobbler named, Luigi Belmonte, and through song and dance, that Joe and Rose Marie ultimately learn about the importance of acceptance, finding love and staying true to oneself.