853 posts
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Post by bordeaux on May 10, 2023 8:37:21 GMT
This seems to be starting in Bath and going Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham and York. It's been a while since I saw something of hers but this certainly has potential.
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853 posts
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Post by bordeaux on May 10, 2023 8:38:12 GMT
Could a mod please change the title to Wise Children, not Wild Children? Sorry.
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4,963 posts
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Post by TallPaul on Sept 6, 2023 16:55:59 GMT
Possibly coming to a theatre near YOU...
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1,347 posts
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Post by Dave B on Oct 11, 2023 21:15:19 GMT
London venue with tickets going on sale to Wise Children Club members to be announced 'next week'
Dates so far are:
Bath Theatre Royal – 2nd February – 10th February
Manchester Home – 13th February – 24th February
Theatre Royal York – 27th February – 9th March
The Lyceum, Edinburgh – 12th March – 30th March
So April somewhere in London, West End, smaller?
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Post by curiouskc on Oct 11, 2023 21:58:39 GMT
I'll be seeing this at HOME. After Wise Children and Wuthering Heights I am devoted to seeing anything Emma Rice directs.
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279 posts
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Post by fossil on Oct 12, 2023 16:49:11 GMT
I'll be seeing this at HOME. After Wise Children and Wuthering Heights I am devoted to seeing anything Emma Rice directs. If you haven't seen it yet, her Shakespeare's Globe production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is still available in iPlayer. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001npy4 |
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Post by curiouskc on Oct 13, 2023 20:12:59 GMT
Thanks for letting me know! I've only been following her since Wise Children, so I've not seen this.
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2,348 posts
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Post by zahidf on Oct 18, 2023 11:07:39 GMT
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279 posts
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Post by fossil on Oct 18, 2023 19:09:47 GMT
Just booked my tickets for the BAC and noticed the E-tickets say "This performance is relaxed...".
After initially cursing myself for not noticing this when I booked the ticket I checked again and found towards the bottom of the show page it says:
PERFORMANCE INFORMATION
All performances will be Relaxed. We invite you to make yourself comfortable and move around if you need to and if you need to leave the performance at any point you will be allowed to return to the space when you feel ready.
Turns out that this applies to all performances of everything they put on at the BAC.
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2,348 posts
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Post by zahidf on Oct 18, 2023 21:42:22 GMT
Just booked my tickets for the BAC and noticed the E-tickets say "This performance is relaxed...". After initially cursing myself for not noticing this when I booked the ticket I checked again and found towards the bottom of the show page it says: PERFORMANCE INFORMATION All performances will be Relaxed. We invite you to make yourself comfortable and move around if you need to and if you need to leave the performance at any point you will be allowed to return to the space when you feel ready. Turns out that this applies to all performances of everything they put on at the BAC. Yup it's been like that for a while |
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Post by threeletteracronym on Feb 15, 2024 17:43:05 GMT
Any feedback yet? I'm seeing this next week in Manchester, looking forward to it.
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3,083 posts
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Post by david on Feb 15, 2024 18:10:48 GMT
Any feedback yet? I'm seeing this next week in Manchester, looking forward to it. I’m there for this Saturday’s matinee so I’ll post my thoughts on it. |
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Post by curiouskc on Feb 18, 2024 13:54:25 GMT
I saw it last night in Manchester and loved it. Another intoxicating magical fable from Emma Rice. Lovely to see several of the cast members from Wise Children back in this one. This is a very Angela Carter-esq retelling of the Blue Beard folktale and definitely the most musical Rice show I've seen. In Act 1 especially there's more singing than speaking and the cast are all terrific vocalists/musicians. Like the Guardian says, it has a very cabaret show feel.
One thing I wasn't prepared for at all was the twist that comes in the final fifteen minutes. Throughout the Blue Beard retelling, there's also a separate story of a brother and sister that weaves in and out. I couldn't predict how the two stories would eventually connect, but when that moment came I had chills all over and the whole audience fell into a stunned silence till the end of the show. Hold onto your hearts, because it's devastating.
My fourth Wise Children show and as ever, I can't wait for what they do next.
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3,083 posts
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Post by david on Feb 18, 2024 14:05:57 GMT
A few thoughts from yesterday afternoons visit to Manc HOME to watch this. With a runtime of around 2hrs with a 20 minute interval this latest offering from Emma Rice was very much a mixed bag for me. From the foreword in the play text available to buy from the box office (£10) as a QR code was available for a free digital programme (you have to sign up to the wise children site to access it), Emma noted that she didn't like the original Blue Beard tale as it glamourises the serial killer of women in the story rather than putting the women's stories front and center. In her version, she wanted to correct this and shine a light on their stories.
In this version we meet the sisterhood of the fearful, f**ked and furious (a sisterhood that has very much Tarantino vibes than the Call the Midwife nuns) who is led by Katy Owen's brilliant feisty and witty Mother Superior who also acts as a narrator to the piece and helping to link the interweaving stories that are told through asides and some pier-side jokes to the audience.
In the contemporary story we meet an endearing young man played by Adam Mirsky who is looking for his lost sister played by Mirabelle Gremaud whilst concurrently we get the Blue Beard story. Tristan Sturrock as the villain of the play plays Blue Beard with the right balance of charm, slime and evil to become a menacing individual.
The stories are told through some catchy songs from Stu Barker as well as some terrific acting and vocals from the cast and with Emma's usual theatrical flair (with some magic tricks chucked in for good measure) there is plenty to keep you entertained. This production is part musical, part gig and part play. With all the music played live by some of the cast members there is a nice electric mix of songs from jazz, rock and some acoustic numbers they certainly added an extra layer to proceedings.
With a sparse set from designer Vicki Mortimer mainly consisting of 3 different sized wardrobes, the stage strangely didn't seem that empty thanks to the onstage presence of musical instruments.
Act 1 whilst certainly a fun one with plenty of humour there is a dark undercurrent of horror and evil that bubbles quietly that is comes to the fore in a darker Act 2 with a chilling and sobering end. The use of pre-recorded video projected onto a screen at the end amplifies this. The issue I had was that the production seemed disjointed by the end of Act 1 I couldn't see how the contemporary story and the Blue Beard tale would come together and made for a bit of a head scratcher interval but it is in the last 10 minutes that really give this production some real emotional punch as the 2 stories come together to bring home the powerful message that Emma is trying to get across and certainly hits home after the case of Sarah Everard.
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Post by aingidh on Mar 29, 2024 12:11:07 GMT
If anyone is in the Edinburgh area, the code Beard5 can be used for a £5 discount on the Lyceum website
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4,596 posts
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Post by Someone in a tree on Mar 29, 2024 18:21:46 GMT
Booking is open for Battersea Arts Centre
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1,203 posts
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Post by Steve on Apr 27, 2024 22:23:17 GMT
Saw this tonight and LOVED it. I agree with the positive sentiments above. This is excellent Emma-Rice-style storytelling, blending comedy, music, horror, showmanship, community and an overall positive vision for humanity. Think Moulin Rouge meets the Bluebeard fairytale. I liked this better than Wise Children and Twelfth Night, marginally better than Bagdad Cafe and Romantics Anonymous, and about on a par with "Brief Encounter," which I also LOVED. The only Emma Rice shows I've seen that I'd rank above this are "The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk," "The Red Shoes" and the amazing "A Midsummer Night's Dream." A key magical ingredient of the latter was Katy Owen's hysterical, impish Puck, and she is the magical ingredient of this production as well. Some spoilers follow. . . Bluebeard is a serial killer of women, so you'd think that's more up Alfred Hitchcock's alley than Emma Rice's, but Emma Rice has a habit of finding light in the dark, and as far as serial killer stories go, this is as light as it gets. Katy Owen is an absolute hoot as the raspy, chippy, blurty, eccentric, irrepressible, comically thin-skinned, blue-bearded compere of a Mother Superior! She gets some wonderfully humorous lines and nails them better than anyone else could. At the same time, as is appropriate for a story about women in danger, at one point we get to see something a bit more rare, a dead serious Katy Owen, and that had some serious bite. Anyhow, this is a very entertaining rendition of the Bluebeard tale, with most of his evil thankfully reserved for backstory. Tristan Sturrock is fabulously diabolical as Bluebeard, channeling the panache of a young Jim Broadbent. Also, among the ensemble, Adam Mirsky sings beautifully as a mysterious young man, who also makes an excellent sincere foil for Owen's comic shtick, and as the mother and two daughters who fall under Bluebeard's spell, Patrycja Kujawska, Robyn Sinclair and Stephanie Hockley are dynamic and entertaining singers and actors. All in all, this is great fun, with an effective sting in its tail as well. 4 stars from me.  |
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806 posts
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Post by duncan on Apr 28, 2024 9:52:51 GMT
Dear goodness its got the Rice faults - LET THE WORDS BREATHE, yet again its a production smothered in movement and action and bloody ribbons!!! It comes across as a Director who doesn't believe in the actual play so 19 things must be happening on stage at the same time to divert your attention. t was OK but its smothered in business that for me detracts from the actual story. The last Emma Rice production I'd seen was A Matter of Life and Death (which starred a couple of cast members here) and that too suffered from people with ribbons and acrobatics and nonsense. 15 years later and this was more of the same. And you are right about the ending - the last 10 minutes are a massive change of tone and it doesn't pull it off satisfactorily. The boy/sister plot is very peripheral so to pivot to them as the finale and the way the story goes are clearly a comment on modern society BUT we've just spent the last 110 minutes watching something that has made exactly the same point but in a far better way. I did ponder on the way home if it would work better without the video and instead having the climax be done on the stage with the actor involved and then adding in the actor playing Blue Beard as the other person in the video (trying not to spoil). I also had to read up on the legend of Blue Beard to find out what actually happened with the key and why she just didn't clean it and hang it back on the glitter ball as the reason for it still being covered on blood either wasn't clearly explained or it passed me by. .....and I thought Katy Owen was absolutely terrible - worst performance I've seen in decades, though I suspect its been smothered in Rice. ....and with my bad back there is no way I'd be going in the box for the sawing thew women in half trick. I'd say a 5 out of 10 but with potential to be better if Emma Rice wasn't using her usual bag of tricks. Also disappointed we didn't get to see any of his pirate career  |
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