By Emma Rice
Wise Children Theatre Company
Emma Rice- writer and director
Stu Barker- composer
Vicki Mortimer- set and costume designer
Simon Baker- sound & video design
Theatre Royal Bath
Wednesday 7th February 2024, 14.30
CAST
Mirabelle Grimaud – lost sister, harp, bass guitar
Stephanie Hockley- Trouble, Musical Director, piano
Patrycja Kujawska – Treasure, violin
Adam Mirsky- Lost Brother, guitar, bass
Katy Owen – Mother Superior
Robyn Sinclair – Lucky, guitar
Tristan Sturrock – Blue Beard (Possibly bass)
Stu Barker- Sister Susie of the Dulcimer, drums, bass
The matinee was packed upstairs with school parties. They’re the age group that needs to see this stuff, it succeeds, it works, it’s a powerful message, it is not aimed at the Baby Boomer audience (us).
Emma Rice has reimagined the Perrault folk tale of Blue Beard from 1697. While I was series editing graded ELT readers for children, we spent a long time looking at Perrault’s tales, but we dismissed Blue Beard early on as too gruesome. Emma Rice re-sets it in the modern day. Mostly it’s a comedy musical, but there is a twist, or rather a total change of direction and style which I won’t reveal, which plunges it with a bang into now, and there’s the message. That’s a feat to carry off and it works, and all the better for it. Stage craft? It’s Emma Rice. It’s packed full of theatrical ideas. So much so that at the end the four from the stage management crew are brought on to share the curtain call.
The style is pure Watermill. i.e. Watermill Theatre Newbury. So a musical. Every actor plays an instrument, though at least three played bass. They switch back and forth and they’re all very good. My guess is that they cast it and then do the arrangements that suit what the cast can play.
So here they have a powerful rock violinist in Patrycja Kujawska and a harpist in Mirabelle Grimaud – not an instrument you’d expect. As at the Watermill, bass is the one that gets shared around. I guess if you can play violin you can have a go at acoustic bass, and any guitarist can easily have a go at electric bass. Mirabelle Grimaud is able to do lead vocal and play bass guitar at the same time. Yes, Paul McCartney, Sting, John Wetton, Jack Bruce … but actually it’s particularly hard to do (try rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time) unless you’re an accomplished bass guitarist. Mirabelle Grimaud also doubles as the magician’s assistant in spangly leotard and adds dancing, working on ballet points and doing the splits to acting, singing, playing the harp and bass guitar. This is the kind of all round ability this production requires.
The original music score by Stu Barker is a major strength lyrically and musically, five stars without a doubt. He appears briefly then retires to percussion at the rear. Stephanie Hockley is credited as Musical Director and is acting as Trouble and plays piano. Her solo song as Trouble is a fabulous rock performance, keeping playing, standing up, as they roll the baby grand piano forward.
There are issues. This is very early on in its tour, the first theatre. They will almost certainly tweak it. The big issue is the first fifteen minutes or so, which is incoherent. You really can’t see where it’s going. Is it going for pantomime? Or rock musical? You can’t see who Lost Brother and Lost Sister are or how they’re involved (I won’t tell you). The convent? What’s that got to do with it?
Where it fails most is Mother Superior (Katy Owen). This is an actor who was Malvolio, and Puck in five star Emma Rive Globe productions at The Globe where she was superb. This isn’t just memory. We have both on DVD. We also saw both twice at The Globe, we liked them so much we returned. She was a perfect build for Puck. Her tiny build was ironic and very funny for Malvolio. So what happened? Is it unfair to cast an actor to do what is effectively stand-up? I did lights twice a night, six days a week for entire summers on Tommy Cooper, Mike Yarwood, Ken Dodd. It’s all in the timing and phrasing. They all timed differently in the 6pm show (more families) than in the 8.30 show. They could read an audience, hot evenings, stormy evenings, all affected delivery. Generally, you can’t successfully do stand-up comedy from someone else’s script. Most actors can’t do it (The exceptions are Olivier and then Branagh doing a scripted Archie Rice in The Entertainer.) At the end, when it switches from comedy to deadly serious, Katy Owen is truly marvellous. That’s one reason why she was cast, but her background in comedy is very strong. At the beginning of Act Two she is beginning to get it right and it works well with the audience. I’m not sure enough of the Bath matinee audience got the extended KitKat joke though.
At the start of Act One though, she just doesn’t work as narrator, and it’s vital. She is challenged by her height and very slim build, dire AmDram convent costume and by the silly beard. It’s also true that the script may be most at fault here. I’d’ve cast someone more maternal in appearance (for what comes later). In the interval, my companion, using the loop system, said ‘They were all crystal clear except the narrator. I could hardly follow what she was saying at all.’ I said, ‘Me too.’ Then as I waited for Karen to queue for the loo, a party of three were saying ‘Could you hear what the narrator was saying? I couldn’t.’ She seemed to be straining to be heard, trying too hard, where the rest of the cast sounded loud, relaxed, confident. Karen said it wasn’t so much lack of volume but that she was speaking fast and dropping volume at the end of sentences.
Does the beard interfere? I don’t know. They all had head mics though. Maybe the sound engineer hadn’t got hers right? That’s possible and easily worked on. That is the the major problem in the production. Maybe too much is put on a narrator. I think the first fifteen minutes needs serious attention and focussing … then it flies. It’s worth waiting for.
As soon as the three women … Treasure and her daughters, Trouble, and Lucky, drop their chequered nun’s costumes (those costumes don’t work either- straight nun’s habits would have been better) and start moving in unison, dancing and singing, it’s on its way. Robyn Sinclair is Lucky, the one who marries Blue Beard, and she has performed with the Watermill, and we’ve seen her. She has charisma.
Tristan Sturrock is Blue Beard, who appears first as a magician, selecting Lucky to be cut in half. They do the whole stage routine of cutting a woman in half too. I still don’t know how it works, though the expression it’s all done with mirrors may be connected to it. With that and the knife throwing, it actually means we have a full-on traditional magician act.
No plot spoiler. The eventual defeat of Blue Beard is terrific stuff, active, funny and brilliantly choreographed too. Then we switch to black and white video projection, also of high quality. We find out the Lost Girl / Lost Boy thread’s meaning. The cast end by dropping their stage costumes and reverting to street clothes. Thats important- it’s no longer a fiction. No more! Go and see it.
We drove back from Bath, pondering the production’s theme of male violence against women, listening to BBC Radio 4 news. Surprise, surprise. The perpetrator of the vicious alkali attack on a woman and her two young daughters in Clapham a week earlier was already known to the victims. We reckon the script missed a trick on Blue Beard’s serial murders of women too … they should have said ‘The police weren’t interested. It’s a domestic.’ In the 70s, Erin Pizzey’s campaign for battered women in the 70s was one we supported, and yes, the police were a major part of the problem, refusing to get involved in any ‘domestic’ until it was too late.
Emma Rice is quoted online:
Not wanting to add to the number of dead women that are scattered throughout our literature and media, I have always avoided the gruesome tale of Blue Beard. However, haunted by the regular and painful chime of murdered woman in the news, I woke one morning with the story knocking powerfully at my dreams. I pulled my copy from the shelves and with some trepidation, unlocked the door of Blue Beard’s castle. What I found hidden in those pages was a story not about dead women but about vibrant, flawed, joyful living ones. Here was a story about female friendship, intellect and survival. It is also a story in which, by working together, the aggressor is vanquished. And this is precisely why I want to tell Blue Beard now. In my middle years I want to join forces with those I love and take down the ones who threaten us. I, for one, have had enough, and for Zara Aleena, Jack Taylor, Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman, Daniel Whitworth, Sarah Everard and the thousands and thousands of others who have died at the hands of violent men – Blue Beard is my defiant and hopeful answer.
Secondary schools should take kids. Reclaim the streets, indeed. Teenagers feel invulnerable, invincible. It’s not just the girls either, boys run into dangers from gangs; see the cases of attacks and stabbings.
Three stars *** (but I believe they’ll tweak it and it’ll be more by the time you see it. It wouldn’t need much to add a couple)
It’s going to Manchester, York, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Battersea. Highly recommended.
REVIEWS
Stage Talk Magazine ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
EMMA RICE
Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, Salisbury 2023
Malory Towers, on tour, Exeter 2019
Romantics Anonymous, Wanamaker Playhouse 2017
Tristan & Yseult, Kneehigh, Globe 2017
Twelfth Night, Globe 2017
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, by Daniel Jamieson, Kneehigh / Bristol Old Vic
ROBYN SINCLAIR
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Watermill tour 2019 (Helena)
KATY OWEN
Twelfth Night, Globe 2017 (Malvolio)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Globe 2016 (Puck)
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