JADAR

★★★★☆

Charles Perrault’s Bluebeard is an interesting folktale which is simultaneously sexist and proto-feminist. Emma Rice’s Blue Beard is a contemporary feminist take on the dark cautionary tale. A play with music – or, rather, “music-fuelled feminist revenge” – it is a characteristically eccentric and wonderfully whimsical Wise Children production which leaves you (like the curious, Eve-like protagonist) wanting more and more…

The production is wonderfully designed, as one would imagine for a production by Emma Rice, who was famously fired by Shakespeare’s Globe, in part, because she got a bit too ambitious with lighting… Rice is sort of like the protagonist of this story: too bold, daring and autonomous for a traditional society.

Vicki Mortimer’s stunning set makes use of curtains, à la a magic show (that’s important), constantly revealing pieces of set behind them. Her costumes are camp and a little outlandish, which, along with Malcolm Rippeth’s gorgeous lighting, captures the dreamlike atmosphere of the story (also important).

The cast double as musicians, not only breaking into song but also playing various instruments. Composer Stu Barker (credited as Sister Susie of the Dulcimer) stands at the back of the stage. The diversity of the voices is fantastic. The catchy songs are folksy but also a bit poppy; they feel both historic yet current, which is this play in a nutshell.

The play opens with the Convent of the Three Fs (“Fearful, Fucked and Furious”), led by the mysterious Mother Superior (Katy Owen), who dons a blue beard. In comes running a frantic young man (Adam Mirsky, credited as “Lost Brother”), who the unconventional nuns tackle. The boy pleas with the Sisters to let him stay the night.

Mother Superior asks the boy if he has noticed her blue beard. “I didn’t want to mention it,” he admits humorously. The nun then recounts the tale of Blue Beard – operating as a narrator, a sometimes-convention of fairy tale productions – which sees her and the boy rarely leaving the stage.

The story-within-a-story begins with the funeral of a family’s patriarch. His widow, Treasure (Patrycja Kujawska) and daughters, Lucky (Robyn Sinclair) and Trouble (Stephanie Hockley), are devastated – but they are strong, independent women so they get on with it.

Colourblind casting is increasingly becoming the norm in theatre but Rice uses it not only to increase representation but also to heighten the dream-like, whimsical nature of her plays. In Wise Children’s debut production, a play-with-music adaptation of Angela Carter’s Wise Children, the twin sisters were played by three sets of actors at different stages of their lives, including people of different genders and races. Because why not?

Lucky and Trouble attend a magic show, hosted by the eponymous Blue Beard – in this story, he is not an aristocrat but, rather, a magician. He strikes a knife in the head of his glamorous assistant without anybody realising before performing a magic trick (“sawing a woman in half”) with Lucky. The magic in this production is mind-bogglingly bewitching.

The story then plays out similarly to the original, with Blue Beard and the girl marrying, him leaving her to explore the house but warning her not to enter one room in particular, her rebelling and entering the room to find the bodies of his murdered ex-wives, and him attempting to murder her as a result, before she is saved.

In the original story, she is saved by men, but Angela Carter had her saved by her mother in her feminist retelling, The Bloody Chamber. Whilst Rice has the girl saved by her mother and sister, she also makes her an active heroine; she is actively involved in the fight for her life.

Alongside the main narrative, we are told the story of the aforementioned Lost Brother and his Lost Sister (Mirabelle Gremaud). It is completely unclear how the two narratives are linked, and there is also the mystery of Mother Superior and why she has a blue beard, but all is revealed in the final scene – and it is devastating.

“I will walk home alone,” exclaims a character. “I should be able walk home alone.”

The cast, including the two men, then join hands and walk together, as tears trickle down my face.

This is Bluebeard for today. It’s not straightforward, it’s not smooth, and it’s definitely not subtle. But it’s fearless, fucked, and fabulous.

Emma rice’s Blue Beard runs at HOME (Theatre 1) until February 24 and tours the UK until May 18.

Photo: Steve Tanner