Reviews OWE & Fringe Published 13 November 2013

Bluebeard

Soho Theatre ⋄ 5th November - 1st December

Predator.

William Drew

As the neon strip lights come up on Paul Mundell’s suited and booted Bluebeard, he lays claim to the language of sex. “I shall not call it cunt…I shall call it red” Sex is his world and he lures women to him through his mastery of that world. His dominant personality also has a violent streak and this is part of his allure.

Of course, knowing the story, we can all see where this modern retelling is going but, in the noble tradition of Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter and Béla Bartók among others, Hattie Naylor makes it her own and finds her own unique way through it. To start with, our narrative perspective is that of the murderer himself rather than his final victim. Like Bluebeard, she has a total mastery of her world and the language that makes up that world. Everything is precise, elegant and exacting. There’s an aspect of high-level roleplay to the retelling, accentuated by Mundell’s heightened performance in which he is often playing states. He keeps the audience at a distance just as he describes keeping his women at a distance.

After the description of the first murder: disturbing, sexual, masochistic, an older couple near the front leave the theatre. I appreciate that they couldn’t handle what they were hearing but I was also surprised by their bravery. Every woman who tries to look behind Bluebeard’s mask ends with a grizzly demise. She has broken the unwritten contract and has to be destroyed. I wouldn’t have left the theatre even if I hadn’t been as mesmerised by the play as I was because I desperately needed Mundell to break out of character and smile reassuringly at his audience during the curtain call.

Naylor’s Bluebeard exists in the sexual and psychological worlds. He isn’t repulsive. He doesn’t look like a “brute”. In this, he is more Patrick Bateman than Charles Perrault’s character. What’s important is the complicity. He shows them the chamber. They consent to being beaten, whipped, tied and left for days or so he says. We only have his narration but since he openly confesses his murders to us, there doesn’t seem that much reason to doubt him. Consent becomes a very thorny issue though. He admits to choosing damaged women, often those with a history of abuse. At what point do we decide that someone’s consent no longer matters?

The chamber exists in Bluebeard’s mind and it hints at his own possible history of abuse: something so horrifying that, even knocking at the door or “digging” as he puts it, results in the murder of the curious party. For all the horrifying events described in Bluebeard, it is as ever that which is unknown that is most terrifying and this is a bloody chamber that is never opened up for us to see inside.

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William Drew

William Drew is a writer, narrative designer and dramaturg based in Brighton. He makes work at the intersection between live performance and gaming as Venice as a Dolphin and a Coney Associate. He is Associate Dramaturg of New Perspectives in Nottingham. He spent several years working in the Royal Court Theatre’s International and Literary Departments and has been a script reader for the National Theatre, Hampstead and Traverse Theatres. You can find out more about his work here: http://www.williamdrew.work

Bluebeard Show Info


Produced by Gallivant

Directed by Lee Lyford

Written by Hattie Naylor

Cast includes Paul Mundell

Link http://sohotheatre.com/

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