Read review by Bob Proctor
The problem is one of imagination. Bartok and Balazs had imagination sufficient to create a compelling work which we are still interested in nearly 100 years later. Sadly, Daniel Kramer et al have rather taudry and pedestrian imaginations in comparison. This production suffered from its visualisation because everything was subservient to Daniel Kramer's view of the work and no one - neither of the performers, not the conductor nor the orchestra - seemed able to reach beyond it and touch or connect with the original. "Bluebeard" is horrific and disturbing enough - we don't need to have it visualised in such a pedestrian and literal way. We just end up being subjected to a performance more to do with the disgusting (but ultimately tedious) imagination of Daniel Kramer than the rich expression of a s eemingly eternal and utterly humane struggle which was intended by the writers, 90 years ago.
The orchestral playing and singing expressed no sense of the shrillness that comes of genuine fear and horror needed to perform this work - when door 5 opens the sound should knock you off your seat, if Bluebeard is going to sit at the front of the stage rocking, he should be acting distress and madness and not sitting there rocking because he's been told to do so. There was, however, real pathos in Clive Bayley's repeated line "Tears, Judith" real sadness here. If only the Bayley and Michaela Martens had been given more space to connect withe the work and express their own personalities. But, ultimately, no one was good enough or big enough to overcome the dispicable narrowness Daniel Kramer gave to the whole proceedings - like a straitjacket, like an "Eastenders" view, like some peurile and nasty hole. Why didn't someone tell him it was no good and ask him to start again?
Read review by Dafni Remoundou
I recently watched the double bill Duke's Bluebeard Castle and the Rite of Spring. Magical musical moments offered open-heartedly by genious Conductor Ed Gardner and the Orchestra. Bartok's work was pleasant to watch and listen to, though sometimes Mr Kramer was rather confusing,as he played about with both severly realistic and magically poetic imagery, being, thus, more misleading regarding his intentions rather than engaging. Our two singers were passionately faithful and did their best to prove their existence right on stage. Watching the Rite of Spring, gave me one of my biggest disappointments of my life in the field of dance, and I a strictly coming from an audience's point of view-I am not trying to embody the unfullfilled issues of reviewers who think can control the world by judging art and setting their own stand ards for quality. Who am I to judge one? But I need to share this: the performance was an absolute ridiculant in the name of dance. The dancers were not dancing, half of the male performers were out of beat and not familiar with the choreography and, finally, there was no choreography given. Having watched Grotowski working and creating what we naively call nowadays "physical theatre", I begin to wonder where the line draws between dance and expression and just a dozen of monkeys running around a space with no grace or no intention. It was at least sloppy what I watched and was struck amazed with the audience's response. On top of that, Mr Keegan-Dolan had to strip the men naked to change into feminine clothes, just as an urgent cry for attention, though clearly not needed. What I mostly remember of the performance was these naked men and the music geniously guided and performed. I plead - try to show to the people what a human body can trully do. Contemporary and inovative are one thing; stupidity is another. Watch this work being performed and and conceptualized by other artists and understand what one does when dealing with dance: talking with the bodies, expressing. Thank you very much for your time.
Read review by Alan Barker
Bluebeard was an interesting concept, but why do virtually producyions omit the spoken PROLOGUE?
As for THE RITE OF SPRING I doubt if it pssible to come up with a more idiotic and stupid interpretation of the piece. yet another director who fancies themselves as being clever, but frankly it was so awful I nearly cried.
Read review by Don Cowell
You promised us "a doubly explosive evening" for the recent performances of Duke Bluebeard's Castle and the Rite of Spring under Edward Gardner. Musically speaking, I have to agree - the huge orchestra managed to fill the auditorium with a wash of impressionistic/expressionistic sound. Fabulous Beast lived up to their billing for the production of Rite of Spring, but I'm afraid that Daniel Kramer's Bluebeard was a damp squib. My ideal production would be a "Hammer House of Horror" effort with Christopher Lee and Liv Tyler, special effects by Peter Jackson. Instead we were presented with a "Last of the Summer Wine" concoction - Bluebeard definitely being modelled on Compo and although Judit wasn't quite up to Nora Batty, that temptress did make a brief entrance during the 7th door scene.
And what happened to the prologue?
Read review by Mike Detheridge
It seems that the rise of those director's wanting to impose their own bizarre views on opera is now complete. This production of Bluebeard seems to mainly ignore what the music tells the hearts of those who can listen. At the close it turns one of the most moving operatic endings into an obscene charade watched by child actors on stage. It is very difficult to see any justification for this sickening spectacle. The orchestra as usual was in great form, Judith sang well, but Bluebeard lacked any vocal authority. But maybe he was told to do it that way!
Read review by David Goudge
The new production of 'Duke Bluebeard's Castle' starts so promisingly. The director, Daniel Kramer, comes up with an elegant staging solution to the sequence at the beginning, before the moment when Judith - the captured bride - spies the fateful seven locked doors in Bluebeard's lowering castle, and he provides a striking visual image as the pair trudge through the gloomy space. But then the screen flies out to reveal a set unsatisfyingly stuck between impressionism and troublingly banal detail, and you fear you're in for muffed response to Bartok's ever-astonishing masterpiece.
The two main performers display impressive commitment to the director's vision, yet are asked to interpret their characters in ways that run counter to the thrust of the piece. Here, Bluebeard becomes a capricious martinet one moment, and an examp le of near autistic arrested development, in thrall to his war toys and meagre treasure, the next. What could Judith have possibly seen in this capering neurotic? Such an approach dilutes the character's usual progress from self-assured grandeur to the terrible realisation he is doomed repeatedly to destroy his love, an arc that should seem as tragic as that of his wife's, who travels in parallel from adoration to dumb quiescence.
Yet instead of wheedling the keys to the forbidden doors out of her husband's hands through emotional manipulation, Kramer's Judith displays a will and determination at least equal to that of her spouse. So why then does does she submit so meekly to Bluebeard's violence? The production doesn't convince us of the love or desire between these two in the first place, so there is no subsequent sense of a relationship's suffocating intensity and inexorable conflict. And through muddled stage business the opening of the seven doors mis ses the usual force of a psychological striptease.
Yes, yes, yes, we get the analogies to the Fred Wests and the Fritzls, but how far does this really get us? Not to the chilling universalities of the piece, I feel. Done well, 'Duke Bluebeard's Castle' can be truly terrifying - a peep into a hell where others remain forever unknowable, even those we think we know and love the most - a hell where we're doomed to remain prisoners of our own psyche. This production is not done well. It tries too hard to shock, and through the extremity of its final, repellent, tableau of sexual sadism it curiously lets us off the hook.
