Paris in the 1930s. We are in a bar, sipping drinks, entertained
by a pianist alone on stage. In walks Madame Bijou (Chrissie Shaw), the self-described
Queen of the Demimonde. A woman regaling us with stories of her life and her
pleasures.
The small Butterfly Club space, with its red drapery and
upright piano, along with a couple of cabaret tables feels even more intimate
than usual. Shaw, a 72-year-old theatre veteran, strides through the audience
from the back of the house and we are transported.
The show flits from experience to experience in Bijou’s
life, mostly focused on the men she knew at eleven and thirteen and eighteen
and twenty-one. Some of these tales are bawdy; some are unsettling. Shaw’s
character work through Bijou’s life is the show’s strength; we feel her
adolescent uncertainty and the boldness she would gain as an adult.
Throughout the show, Shaw sings songs from the period – songs
by Erik Satie, Emile Spenser and Kurt Weill. Alan Hicks plays piano and is an
occasional sounding board or foil for Bijou.
There are genuinely moving moments in the stories and songs,
but unfortunately the show lacks a strong narrative shape. The details in the
show about the period and Paris and Bijou’s young life were evocative from
moment to moment, but didn’t add up to much.
Follow your dreams, enjoy your pleasure and love is nothing
but trouble. All interesting snippets of ideas, barely fleshed out.
“The mirror lies, much better to look in the glass,” Bijou
says, as she contemplates another glass of wine. And I take another sip of
mine.
This cabaret of secrets and seduction is full of both, but
disappointingly unfocused.
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