Bluets

A last minute returned ticket took me into London and to the Royal Court, fighting through the Championship League crowds to see Ben Whishaw, Emma D’Arcy and Kayla Meikle in Bluets which is pretty resolutely sold out. 

A bit like a poetry reading, a bit like an art installation and, with live cinema as well, it also becomes a bit like an experimental film,  It was an intriguing 75 or so minutes.  The play itself doesn’t really have a narrative, instead being a kind of exploration of love, grief, pain, depression, desire,  all overlaid with the colour blue.  The premise is the narrator has lost a lover and has a friend who has had a terrible accident, and has also fallen in love, or maybe in desire, with the colour blue.  I can understand that, in that blue is surely the most desirable of colours but I was surprised that we didn’t get more of the actual colour on the screens.  

All three actors stand at their own station with a desk with various props, camera, a screen behind them and a large screen above all of their heads.  There are scenes projected on their individual screens and the actors perform in front of them or at their stations.  There are some moments of visual beauty in here (hands together in passion or support, blue trinkets on a beautifully lit shelf) and some sharply expressed emotion as well as the odd bit of humour.  Each actor, brings their own energy to the performance, which highlight different facets to this single personality.  

The text is fragmented, with even single lines being split, echoed, and picked up between the different actors.  When you add the intricate management of props it becomes a bit like a dance in itself (an excellent stage crew keeping it all together) and an exercise in technical choreography with the acting being squashed in between.   The synchronicity is fascinating to watch as the actors move individually or together to illustrate a scene together with the sound and visuals.  Being able to see the workings was very different and interesting but I did find it quite distancing, and wanted more of the actual acting. Overall I found it  hard to bring it together to make a definitive whole but possibly that might be deliberate.  Some individual moments have stuck with me though so it definitely made an impression.

All actors were worth seeing and it sort of made sense in a sideways sort of way.  It’s very different and I can’t make my mind up whether it’s clever or too clever by half.  A bit of both probably but I had an interesting and enjoyable evening anyway.