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A humorous, carnivalesque cocktail of fierce performance and superb music, with a ferocious call to arms to transform our feminist future.Summary
Rating
Good
Emma Rice’s Blue Beard is based on the French folk tale about a man whose curious new wife opens a forbidden door, only to discover all his previous wives chopped up and hidden behind it. The show is artistically fabulous. Sumptuously rich in visual interest, it presents a carnivalesque cocktail of music, illusion and highly theatrical performance. There’s excellent comedy and evocative music. And it offers a searing, important message of justified feminist rage.
Initially, we’re introduced to a hilarious convent of women who perform comic ninja moves as they pronounce themselves as “the fearless, fucked and furious”. They’re led by their glorious Mother Superior (Katy Owen), a diminutive woman wearing a blue beard and delivering cheeky one-liners. It’s signature Rice style. When a lost young man arrives wishing to tell his story, Mother Superior grudgingly allows him to stay, but wants instead to tell him the tale of the women there.
Weaved into this account of devastating abuse is the Lost Boy’s story of a Lost Sister. Adam Mirsky and Mirabelle Gremaud portray an everyday sibling relationship; loving, yet not without argument. Significantly, he doesn’t walk her home.
The cast are simply exceptional. Patrycja Kujawska, Robyn Sinclair and Stephanie Hockley in particular don’t put a foot out of place and are meticulously synchronised as the main characters. There’s fabulous singing and impressive physicality all round. Gremaud is extraordinary, with her stunning acrobatic routines, also playing the harp and guitar.
The illusory quality of male/female powerplay is smartly captured in themes of magic, with Tristan Sturrock as Blue Beard appropriately charismatic as a magician, before descending into a chillingly menacing persona. His magic tricks are entertaining and well-executed, particularly the ‘sawing a woman in half’ which speaks in metaphorical volumes.
The costume and set design by Vicki Mortimer is strikingly quirky, colourful and inventive, capturing multiple themes, from illusion to comedy to horror, and wrapping them together in a cosmic capsule. Additionally, Stu Barker’s music is interesting and exotic, allowing the actor/musicians to engage as a company in a way that supports the end message of the show.
It was perhaps a tough crowd when I attended, happy to laugh at the gags but less keen on the audience participation, so the real world and the theatrical felt detached. By the interval, although I was appreciating the show, I really wasn’t sure where it was going: it felt puzzlingly nebulous. In the second half, although it’s very funny, it’s a little troubling that the women take on ‘masculine’ characteristics and behaviours to be powerful. And it’s only right at the end that there’s real certainty about the message, which even then is a jarring fit.
This is unquestionably a stunningly executed piece, but the whole feels like two sections grafted together. Without giving spoilers, by the time the switch is made to a gritty truth (including use of CCTV style film, the dropping away of costume and some seriously impressive anguish from Owen) the hyper-theatricality has been just too much to let go of; the figures are drenched in characterisation, such that it’s hard to make the leap to reality. The women we’ve seen have adjectival names, are stylised and their behaviours cartoon rather than authentically human. Even the Lost Sister’s performance is choreographed in movement with her brother, so her final drama too is tainted by the performative. The leap is a bit too far and the juxtaposition unsatisfactory, despite a fiercely sound message.
However, this final call to arms is deeply moving and the beautifully portrayed relationship of mother and son bring a powerfully bright hope for a reimagined society in the future. I walked away better for that.
Written and directed by: Emma Rice
Composed by: Stu Barker
Set & Costume Design by: Vicki Mortimer
Sound and Video Design by: Simon Baker
Lighting Design by: Malcolm Rippeth
Choreography by: Etta Murfitt
Produced by: Wise Children
Blue Beard runs at Battersea Arts Centre until Saturday 18 May. Further information and bookings can be found here.
