Burning Bluebeard finds comedy amid tragedy.
It’s an image of terrible beauty. “Imagine fire — dancing across the auditorium ceiling. A fairy ballerina in flames, blazing in the rafters, dropping carnation petals as the audience watches her burn. “It must have been stunning. And horrifying.” Dean Evans, a master clown whose mute, manipulative shenanigans propel the ingenious collision of tragedy and comedy that lies at the singed heart of “Burning Bluebeard,” is describing the Iroquois Theatre fire of Dec. 30, 1903, a horrific Chicago disaster that left more than 600 people dead — hundreds of them children — after a conflagration broke out during a matinee performance of “Bluebeard.”
The lethal blaze might seem an unlikely impetus for a story told by clowns through a vaudevillian smorgasbord of acrobatics, slapstick, aerial stunts, lip syncing and Christmas presents ( the last being doled out to audience members). Yet it was with a smash-up of humor and tragedy that playwright Jay Torrence penned his genre-busting piece.
Now playing at Theater Wit, “Burning Bluebeard” is an unnerving paradox of a show: It’s a story told by clowns, but the clowns are singed and blackened around the edges. It pays homage to those who died in the Iroquois fire, but simultaneously celebrates the extraordinary resilience of those who lived. It’s as gaudy and colorful as a twodollar circus, but plays out on a set that evokes burnt, ashy ruins.
As those who saw “Burning Bluebeard” in its initial incarnation two years ago already know, the production is also one of the funniest shows you’re apt to see this side of Second City. But viewing tragedy through a lens of comedic optimism is nothing new, director Halena Kays points out.
“You think about ‘Waiting for Godot,’ ” says Kays in reference to Samuel Beckett’s 1957 seminal story of two bedraggled clowns waiting vain for a deliverance that never arrives. “The whole play is basically these two guys desperately waiting for someone they think will somehow save them. He never shows up. He never will show up. But the clowns never stop hoping. Never.”
That unique brand of “clown l ogic” — wherein hope springs eternal even when it is totally unjustified — propels the high-energy antics of “Burning Bluebeard.” The narrative unfolds via troupe of scorched clowns, quasi-ghostly entities haunted by the Iroquois fire and determined to enact a kind of cosmic do-over by replaying “Bluebeard” minus the disaster that turned the alley behind the Iroquois into a killing field where bodies stacked up like cordwood.
“We start the show saying this will be the night the show doesn’t end in tragedy,” says Evans. “It doesn’t matter that everyone knows that’s impossible, that we’re doomed no matter what. The clowns hold onto their hope in complete defiance of everything they know is true.”
That hope plays out with through the rambunctiously silly aesthetic of pantomime, the theatrical style that was an integral part of pop culture when “Bluebeard” came through town 110 years ago. “Pantos” weren’t so much about storytelling as they were about spectacle, often boasting casts in the hundreds and featuring dozens of elaborate costume changes, dance numbers and sets.
“Pantomimes like ‘Bluebeard’ were the sitcoms of their day,” Kays says. “Well, the bad sitcoms of their day. They offered the cheapest thrills possible. I’m not judging — I like cheap thrills.”
The grisly tale of “Bluebeard” came prepacked with cheap thrills, Torrence points out. The 1903 pantomime was based on the lurid legend of a serial killer who specialized in hacking his wives to death. “Not exactly what you’d expect at a holiday show for kiddies,” Torrence says.
After unearthing a program from the show (all the wives lived, and came out for a big musical number at the end), Torrence penned “Burning Bluebeard,” carefully blending absurdity with sorrow so that the comedy shone through without minimizing the incomprehensible destruction.
“Tragedies like this don’t make sense,” Kays adds. “We don’t end the show saying, ‘OK, now we have fire codes and everything is fine and we all learned a lesson and lived happily ever after.’ What we want to do is explore how we can deal with them.”