Review: Bluebelle, Crucible Theatre

The theatre is dark apart from a ghost light – the light that remains when all others are extinguished in a theatre. It is the sign for the ghosts of actors to appear and perform once more.

In a very stylised and interpretive production, Theatre Re has created a story with familiar themes. A King and Queen, desperate for a child make a deal with a witch, but renege on the price they promised to pay. The witch’s revenge causes harm to the child, Bluebelle, which is tempered by intervention from the Bluebell Fairy. Bluebelle strays from her parents and falls into bad company. The King and Queen search for her, the King is killed by the witch and the Queen and Bluebelle are saved by the Bluebell Fairy, who dies in the process.

There are threads of several familiar tales here and in a post-show Q&A session, director Guillaume Pigé said that this is intentional, acknowledging that it’s not easy to invent completely new tales, so most are retellings of existing stories with which the audience is already familiar. Hence the company’s name, Theatre Re – reworking existing material.

What is different about Theatre Re is the method of telling these tales. This production is largely non-verbal and set entirely to wonderfully expressive music. Sometimes it is ethereal and mysterious, sometimes menacing and unsettling, sometimes soaring and uplifting. The production owes so much to this incredible sound and composer/musicians Alex Judd and Henry Webster, who play almost non-stop throughout, creating a mesmerising atmosphere.

The four performers, Claudia Marciano as the Queen, Marshall Stay as the King, Giulia de Fabbro as the Witch and Bluebelle, and Marlie James as the Bluebell Fairy are all very impressive. They are each able to convey the rich story clearly with only movement, mime, non-verbal sounds and expression. Their performances are quite hypnotic. Their occasional dialogue is not material to the story and is not electronically transmitted. It is almost as if the audience isn’t really meant to hear it anyway. These are ghosts, after all, performing for each other in a dark theatre. At the end of their performance, they revert to the actors they once were, congratulating each other on their excellence.

The audience in the theatre may not understand every nuance, but considers itself privileged to have witnessed something so extraordinary.

Conceived and directed by: Guillaume Pigé
Composed by: Alex Judd & Henry Webster
Lighting Designed by: Dr Katherine Graham

Bluebelle plays at Crucible Theatre until Thursday 12 June. There are further dates throughout the UK, including Edinburgh Fringe in August.