The opening production in the tenure of a theatre’s new artistic director is always a moment for optimism and celebration. The august Royal Court, desperately running out of ideas in the last couple of years, is now in the playful hands of David Byrne, who made his name through the inspired stewardship of groundbreaking fringe venue the New Diorama, original home of that now West End-conquering musical Operation Mincemeat. Byrne promises a regime which will involve ‘treading the path of maximum adventure’ – and his first offering is certainly anything other than dull.
The overwhelming draw of Bluets is that it stars Ben Whishaw, too infrequently seen on London stages (although he’ll be back later this year for Waiting for Godot). This gloriously shapeshifting actor, celebrated in popular culture for having tea with the late Queen as the voice of Paddington Bear, displays once again his soft sphinx-like quality, elevating humdrum lines into something quietly marvellous and mining surprising wit in the most unpromising seeming of places. Whishaw is one of a trio of performers – Emma D’Arcy and Kayla Meikle are the others – in Katie Mitchell’s self-styled ‘Live Cinema’ production, in which filming takes precedence and screens and technology dominate the stage.
The experimental nature of the project does not end there: the source material, adapted by Margaret Perry, is Maggie Nelson’s eponymous cult poetic memoir, in which she interweaves meditations on he.
