MARY CONWAY recommends an early Shakespearean tragedy that feels so contemporary that it mirrors our daily news
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Bloody chamber theatre
SUSAN DARLINGTON revels in an exhilarating adaptation of the gruesome fairytale that invokes the real-life horror of women lost to male violence
Tristan Sturrock and Katy Owen in Emma Rice’s Blue Beard
[Pic: Steve Tanner] 
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by a new play that loses its drama amid the moral dilemma of re-settling children in the aftermath of WWII
Acclaimed as a masterpiece when it premiered, this study of story-telling in an Irish pub more than lives up to expectations, says MARY CONWAY
SYLVIA HIKINS relishes a comedy that dives deep into Liverpool’s divided loyalties
Blue Beard
York Theatre Royal
ANYONE who’s seen a previous Emma Rice production will know what to expect from Blue Beard: bawdy humour, music hall, and emotional heft. These are all characteristics she shares with Angela Carter, whose work she admires so much she named her theatre company after her 1991 novel Wise Children.
The biggest surprise is, perhaps, that it’s taken her so long to adapt Charles Perrault’s gruesome folktale, which Carter notably updated in classic feminist short story The Bloody Chamber. Rice leans into this revisionist angle in a way her hero would doubtless approve in this co-production with Birmingham Rep, HOME Manchester, Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, and York Theatre Royal.
It’s a characteristically unruly, exhilarating show that lures the audience into false security with mischievous jokes aimed at everyone from Jamie Oliver to Claire from Steps.
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