BLUE BEARD at the Battersea Arts Centre

★★★★

“A ricocheting trip through cabaret, musical, farce, drama, concert, pantomime, horror and fairground ride”

If you’re familiar with Emma Rice’s way of working, whether with Knee High or her current Wise Children company, you will know what to expect when you wander into one of her shows. And you won’t be disappointed with her take on Charles Perrault’s seventeenth century French folktale, ‘Bluebeard’. Apart from slicing up the title into two separate words – ”Blue Beard” – she has also spliced the slim story line, weaving it into a chaotic parable of her own, and throwing in seemingly unconnected subplots and bizarre characters. The beauty of Rice’s productions, though, is how each unruly element of her anarchic approach eventually has a point. Why, for example, is the bellowing Mother Superior of her convent sporting an unconvincing fake, blue beard? Is it just a tacky pun on the title? You need to wait for the strikingly resonant finale to find your answer.

Although it sometimes seems to take a while to get there, it is well worth the journey. A ricocheting trip through cabaret, musical, farce, drama, concert, pantomime, horror and fairground ride. Sometimes it feels like they are making it up on the spot, but we know that they left the improvisation behind in the rehearsal room, and that this is a precise evocation of a dark world where magic and danger lie side by side.

Most of the first act steers clear of the original story, barely dipping its toes into Perrault’s tale. We are in the convent, inhabited by the sisters of the Three F’s (Fearful, Fucked and Furious). Katy Owen, as the Mother Superior, starts to tell a story of a widow (Treasure, played by a sultry Patrycja Kujawska) and her two daughters, Trouble (Stephanie Hockley) and Lucky (Robyn Sinclair). The two girls, coated in years of unconditional love and recently fatherless, are being pushed out into the world to find their way. They soon discover that their cosseted sense of freedom and security is juicy game in a predatory male world. Which is where we find the charismatically menacing Blue Beard (Tristan Sturrock), a claret-clad magician who promptly saws Lucky in half before putting her back together again as his wife. The sleight of hand, illusory dissection is a portent of the grim reality that Blue Beards previous wives are locked away, in bloodied pieces in a secret room of his mansion. It is probably worth pointing out here that a quick read of the original story is advisable before coming to the show.

When Lucky discovers the dead bodies of Blue Beard’s former wives, she is determined not to join their ranks. Cue her sister and mother (in the original it was her brothers, but as this is a modern tale of the power of sisterhood, it is important to get the gender right). Meanwhile, a lost boy (Adam Minsky) is wandering around searching for his older sister (Mirabelle Gremaud). A confusing subtext. At first. But when you grasp the significance, it is hauntingly chilling.

Throughout the show the music simmers underneath and bubbles to the surface in a series of gorgeous melodies. Rooted in folk, Stu Barker’s compositions slot neatly into the narrative and allow the cast to show off their vocal and musical skills; Gremaud who acrobatically switches instruments while lithely sliding into and out of the main action. Never less than stirring, the solos and harmonies float above the acoustic accompaniment of piano, harp, guitar and percussion. Luscious moments juxtaposed against a brutal and bloody backdrop.

The climax is quite harrowing, delivered with undeniable passion, but perhaps spelt out in letters that are too bold. Yet there is no ignoring the urgent truth that it addresses – that of male coercive behaviour and violence towards women. When Katy Owen strips herself out of her Mother Superior habits, a heartrending reveal is discovered. Owen’s stark passion can take your breath away. We realise the fierce undercurrent of grief and loss that has been hidden beneath a haphazard musical drama that is full of laughs. A bewitching combination.