The rejigged, refreshed Bush theatre is here after a year’s closure. Architect Steve Tompkins has opened it to the outside world and itself. It used to have the snug, secluded look appearance of the public library it once was. Now it is the theatrical equivalent of Russian dolls: stages within stages. From the road, you see into the entrance lobby. In the cafe, you peep through a hatch and look on to the stage. A window near the new rehearsal room gives on to a flat roof: planted with pink and green stonecrop, like knitting. Eco-friendly ventilation means that actors can now breathe more easily: when Cush Jumbo did her show about Josephine Baker, she sweated in around 80 degrees.
Barney Norris’s new play While We’re Here opens shortly. Meanwhile, Jamie Lloyd directs Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj. Two young men in indigo suits, bearing long sabres, stand on a wall. Danny Ashok, Darren Kuppan: dutiful, skittish, engaging. Behind them is darkness and something they are not supposed to look at: something made by labourers to honour the mighty. It is the Taj Mahal.
Joseph draws on a legend: that the emperor commanded that all those who built the mausoleum should have their hands chopped off, so that nothing as beautiful be built again. These men are the choppers – and after a statuesque start there are baskets full of hands, rivulets of blood, and a wildly ballooning narrative. There are theories about the relationship between money and labour and creation. There are propositions: that you can’t stop ideas by stopping people. And whimsical wheezes, like the creation of a “transportable hole” that could be popped into things when needed.
Beauty made of blood is brilliantly envisaged in Soutra Gilmour’s unforgettable design. Rust‑coloured channels run with gore. The Taj is not seen, but makes its presence felt as a blaze of white light. Immensity is conjured in a small space as the two small figures in indigo stand alone. The narrative is less clear-cut. This is a coruscating image with an argument attached.
The great spaces in theatre are not always buildings. As Bill Mitchell, who died on 14 April, proved. With Sue Hill at Kneehigh and later at Wildworks, he made dramatic stories in the open air. Landscape was character as well as setting. He sent a birdman soaring over Maltese and Cornish harbours and reimagined woods in Norfolk. The malls, churchyards, seashore and inhabitants of Port Talbot were corralled into a magnificent modern version of the Passion. Mitchell is not a household name, but thousands have watched what he created. Everyone who did so found their idea of theatre – and life – expanded.
• Guards at the Taj is at the Bush theatre, London, until 20 May
