Emma Rice and Wise Children’s Blue Beard is currently at Battersea Arts Centre, bringing Wise Children’s special brand of music, humour, and weirdness.
Set in modern times, we meet Katy Owen’s Mother Superior and the other residents of the Convent of the Three Fs (fearful, fu**ed, and furious).
A lost boy (Adam Mirsky) arrives seeking help. As he trades his story with Owen’s recounting of that of Blue Beard, we see the action of both playing out before us.
Lucky (a sexy and scared Robyn Sinclair) and Trouble (a fun-loving Stephanie Hockley) are sisters seeking an escape to dull the grief after their father’s death.
When magician Blue Beard (Tristan Sturrock) requires a new assistant after an ‘accident’, the classic tale starts to take root. Assistant quickly becomes wife, and the game begins.
The other players in this show are the girls’ mother, Treasure (Patrycja Kujawska), who misses her husband and will fight for her family, and Mirabelle Gremaud as the lost sister, who sings defiantly and directly to us.
The cast are also talented musicians, with Kujawska’s violin and Mirsky’s guitar particularly atmospheric.
Set and costume design by Vicki Mortimer suggests violence and intrigue with the influence of a twisted fairy tale.
Blue Beard is about the men who abuse women, the women who forgive and stay, the women who run away.
It is about the women who walk home alone and the women who can’t trust. The women who are left behind.
Owen’s caustic nun is both storyteller and intervention; while Sturrock’s vicious serial husband has charm and power enough to hint at how he has gained the trust and love of so many.
With a light touch, sometimes an absurd one, Blue Beard leaves you with a satisfying ending to one tale and a gut punch to the other.
Wise Children’s Blue Beard is at Battersea Arts Centre until 18 May with tickets here.
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Image credit: Steve Tanner