Page 102 - FINAL_Theatre of Sound Coverage Book

The eponymous hirsute duke of Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle yields
to the pressure of his new wife Judith to open one door after another of his

castle, revealing aspects of his former life that he might have preferred to

leave unexplored. The enigmatic fable, based on a fairytale by Perrault,

evades simplistic explanation. In our own day we might be inclined to see

the central character as a phallocrat controlling the lives of his series of

wives to the point of murder.

In Daisy Evans’ production for Theatre of Sound, however, Judith is recast

as Bluebeard’s long-standing spouse, now suffering from dementia. The

seven doors of the castle represent locked memories. As macabre events of

Bluebeard’s history are revealed, Judith appears to recognise them.
Whether it is her own life story being played out or whether she’s

imagining Bluebeard’s past secrets remains tantalisingly ambivalent.

”Did you love her more than you love me?” is the most agonising of the

questions she repeatedly asks Bluebeard of a previous wife. Tortured as

much by her fragile grasp of reality as by Bluebeard’s inveterate secrecy,
she elicits our sympathy from the first moment we see them together.

Susan Bullock, in terrific voice, conveyed the pathos inherent in the

character to shattering effect. Gerald Finley, on equally good form, was a

powerful embodiment of a man protecting his vulnerable, sick wife.

Stephen Higgins’ scaled-down version of the score for eight members of
the London Sinfonietta, conducted by himself, worked well in capturing

the piquancy of the semitonal dissonances representing the ubiquity of

blood, less convincingly for generating the brooding miasma that

percolates the score. Stone Nest in Shaftesbury Avenue, a former Welsh

chapel and erstwhile nightclub, provided a suitable venue for Evans’
atmospheric production, designed by Adrian Linford and lit by Jake

Wiltshire.