A microphone suddenly suggests a gun, and images of peroxide blondes – at times fragile and breathy, at others monstrous – flicker almost subliminally across the room in the latest piece of gig-theatre from Gagglebabble. It’s a glittering dark gem responding to the life and death of Ruth Ellis who was hanged in 1955 for shooting her faithless lover, David Blakely.
There is much to enjoy in this 90-minute piece written and performed by the truly astonishing Lucy Rivers with help from her neatly named band, the Bad Mothers. Ellis was accused of being a bad mother. But don’t go expecting a traditional narrative in an evening that comes wrapped in a conceit: the recording of a live album, inspired by Ellis, performed by a singer-songwriter who is in a troubled relationship with her controlling producer, also called David.
Sinners Club is never overt, always understated, working through music, atmosphere and illusion. It’s about the half-glimpsed and the half-connected – Ellis was friends with Vicki Martin who was involved with Stephen Ward of Profumo affair notoriety. The space feels liminal: part in the present but also soaked in the seedy glamour of the Mayfair club where Ellis worked.
It is like a series of half-solved clues in song form – Rivers’ Singer gradually reveals more of herself and the story through numbers that range from country to plaintive torch songs. Rivers rivets the attention as a woman fighting her fear of not being heard. “I can’t hear my voice,” she says, the panic rising. A microphone swings in the recording booth like an empty noose.
- At the Other Room, Cardiff, until 24 February. Box office: 0333-666 3366. Then at Theatr Clwyd, 2-18 March. Box office: 01352 701521.
