★★★★★

“beautiful in its simplicity”

‘Exxy’ starts us in a quiet, dusty South Australian garden. Saltbush scattered through the trees, plastic garden chairs patterned with flowers, corrugated iron (set design Kat Heath), and a kindly unseen character ‘nan’ create a safe playground on stage. Dan sets a similar tone, encouraging us to tic, stim and relax; we should be unapologetically ourselves, setting an environment to go on some self-exploration.

Dan Daw, a queer, crippled artist, transports the audience to the rural Australian outback where he grew up, working class and with very little, to explore the route of his imposter syndrome. Dan is joined by three performers who walk and talk like him, finding comfort and resilience in the possibility of finally blending in after a lifetime of standing out. Sofía Valdiri, Tiiu Mortley and Joe Brown together with Dan wonderfully bring raw and honest characters to their engaging performances. They show us the world full of competition, capitalism, and drive, where your worth is measured against a pre-conceived idea of success.

The world says you’re too disabled, or not disabled enough, fighting to show you as a fraud, demanding, “¿Quién eres? qui es-tu?” but not waiting for an answer. The show forces the audience to listen to the performers talk about themselves, and to see them. To see them as they dance and move and show us the pain they’ve endured by being forced to fit in and “corrected”.

However, not only do Dan and the performers reject this world, but they also tell us how they burst through it. The saltbush winds its way through the story and the stage, resilient like the performers, “not because I need to be”, but because it’s beautiful to be.

The show matched whimsy with wailing. Punchlines with pain. The characters took us from smiling, jokey and bashful, to showing us disabled bodies moving and dancing and unflinchingly professing their true feelings. Dan and Sarah Blanc’s rousing co-direction keeps us on our toes right from the start. They, along with Nao Nagai’s lighting and Lewis Gibson’s sound, make cohesive choices from a range of theatre tech and effects, all the way down to the tennis ball machine firing right at the audience. Through it all, however, we’re always encouraged that we’re in a safe space. The surprises are gently packaged, and everything is done with a glint in the performers’ eyes.

Exxy is beautiful in its simplicity. The performers made the audience see them for what they are: disabled and beautiful. They showed us the difficulty they had faced from the world, but then how they rejected it. They remind us what they are not, and what we are. An excellent performance all round.

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.

Tag Archives: Battersea Arts Centre

EXXY

★★★★★

UK Tour

EXXY

Battersea Arts Centre

★★★★★

“beautiful in its simplicity”

EXXY

Battersea Arts Centre then UK Tour continues

Reviewed on 7th October 2025 for thespyinthestalls.com

Photography by Hugo Glendinning

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BLUE BEARD | ★★★★ | April 2024

SOLSTICE | ★★★★ | December 2023

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD | ★★½ | December 2022

TANZ | ★★★★ | November 2022

HOFESH SHECTER: CONTEMPORARY DANCE 2 | ★★★★★ | October 2022

EXXY

EXXY

EXXY

BLUE BEARD

★★★★

Battersea Arts Centre

BLUE BEARD at the Battersea Arts Centre

★★★★

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