Battersea Arts Centre – until 18 May 2024
Reviewer Alec Legge
5*****
The show was performed in the main hall at the Battersea Arts Centre. The seating was excellent with an unrestricted view of the stage from all seats. No heads in the way due to their steep incline. A very welcome arrangement.
Emma Rice’s Blue Beard is based on an old French folk tale of a rich man’s crazed and bloody passion for murdering his wives. In this musical version the murderer is a magician, played by Tristan Sturrock, who meets Lucky, Robyn Sinclair, when Robyn volunteers to help him on stage. Then there is the illusion of Robyn being cut in half by Blue Beard. Robyn falls in love with him, marries him and goes to live with him.
Blue Beard goes on a trip leaving Robyn with the keys to his residence and saying that she is allowed to go in all the rooms situated within except for one room in particular and shows her the key to that room. Off he goes and of course it is not long before Robyn’s curiosity draws her to enter the room with her mother and sister, Played by Patrycja Kujawska and Stephanie Hockley, where they find the stinking bloody remains of all his previous wives.
On his return Blue Beard finds out from a magic key that the forbidden room has been entered and attempts to murder Robyn, but with the help of her mother and sister, and in a perfectly choreographed slow motion fight the trio finally kill Blue Beard with a knife through the head.
Rice has written a sub plot where a lost brother, Adam Mirsky, is searching for a lost sister, Mirabelle Gremaud, and also added a group of sisters from the Convent of the three F’s, ‘fearful, fucked and furious’, who are led by a Mother Superior, Katey Owen, sporting a blue beard. Of her own.
In all this was a very good show, with the excellent dancing and singing performed cabaret style. There was lots of humour alongside the macabre horror side of the show. Rice states that she was influenced by the recent murders of two women in London and by the events at the vigil for one of them. She has clearly illustrated the misogynistic violence of man against women in this performance.
The addition af a silent film of a lone woman walking through the streets at night and disappearing along an alley whilst being followed by a hooded stalker was particulary spine chilling and illustrated the way Rice was affected by the recent murders.
I should also mention that the use of moveable props and the lighting effects enhanced the performance as did the background music.
All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this performance which I would recommend to all.