STAGE REVIEW - BLUE BEARD

 

Tristan Sturrock (Blue Beard) and Katy Owen (Mother Superior)
Blue Beard a new play by Wise Children
Written and Directed by Emma Rice
Photographer Steve Tanner

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Led by writer and director, Emma Rice for touring theatre company Wise Children, this new play Blue Beard is a co-production that is flaunty, explicit, amusing and serious and, pretty much, all at the same time.

Based on Charles Perrault's Blue Beard (published 1697) there have been many retellings of the French author's creepy tale about a man with blue body hair from a child, who grew up to have money and a large house and who had many wives who had strangely disappeared.

Stephanie Hockley (Trouble), Patrycja Kujawska (Treasure), Robyn Sinclair (Lucky)
in the stage production Blue Beard
Photographer Steve Tanner

In this new version Blue Beard is a magician and performs his stage act. Lucky marries Blue Bird in a whirlwind romance. She, her sister Trouble, along with their recently widowed mother, Treasure, enjoys partying at the marital home while Blue Beard is away. Lucky had been forewarned not to use the key and enter a room in the house that is out of bounds, which, and to her detriment, she does nonetheless. Together, Lucky, Treasure and Trouble make a stand against the perpertrator.

Adam Mirsky (Lost Brother)
and Mirabelle Gremaud (Lost Sister)
in stage production Blue Beard 
Photographer Steve Tanner

A separate narative is knitted together by the Mother Superior character who acts as the narrator of both stories and through this character much of the comedy is channeled. She tells of a modern day Brother (Lost Brother) and sister (Lost sister) and the everyday lives of these siblings are juxtaposing and contrasting with the outrageous absurdity of the unfolding drama centred around Blue Beard and the three women.

The language references modern day, popular culture and colloquial terms are used, however the music and songs, along with the acrobatics and dance, adds more than just a splash of Commedia dell'Arte; portrayals are to this type.

The players are all clever, musically, playing various musical instruments... these performances are full on. The jokes and the knife throwing are fun; also the fight scene in slow motion - a wonderful ensemble of talented individuals whose timings are impeccable.

The comedy waxes and wanes and the momentum drops at times because of lengthy songs that are overly repetitive. It is all deliberately unsettling and weird, especially when the focus switches from fiction to reality and the play addresses the abduction and comprised safety of women simply walking out or are in the domestic setting, going about their everyday in other words, but who fall foul at the hands of criminal men with dark and cruel intention.

Final scenes are highly charged and the air is thick with strained emotion in an attempt to hammer home the message that this has always happened and continues to happen to women. Chiming this old tale from seventeeth century with real-life women being attacked and murdered it is vital in its inventiveness to highlight this continuing scourge of society.

Cast

Blue Beard - Tristan Sturrock

Lost Brother - Adam Mirsky

Lost Sister - Mirabelle Gremaud

Lucky - Robyn Sinclair

Mother Superior - Katy Owen

Sister Susie of the Culcimer - Stu Barker

Treasure - Patrycja Kujawska

Trouble - Stephanie Hockley

**ENDS**

Review by Theatre Critic, Debra Hall who attended opening night of Blue Beard at The Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham UK at 7.30pm

REFERENCES 

Emma Rice's Blue Beard Open the Bloody Door electronic programme 

google.com

The Birmingham Repertory Theatre Your confirmation for the Opening Night of Blue Beard and production photographs (04 April 2024)

Pitt Education Charles Perrault https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault03.html

Wise Children 

https://www.bluebeardonstage.com/wise-children