Written for Culture Wars
Kneehigh’s name is starting to look less an invocation of childhood, than a fascination with limbs cut short. After the footless Footloose story of The Red Shoes comes an adaptation of Grimm folktale The Handless Maiden. Here, though, the former’s clean chocolate and cream aesthetic is replaced with mud and spit.
It is both to Kneehigh’s credit and their detriment that The Wild Bride stretches the simple tale out so long. A girl, accidentally sold to the devil by her father in a classic diamond in the stuff mix-up, is shorn of her hands after proving too pristine. From there follow her wilderness years and subsequent rescue by royalty, marriage and crude bionic limbs. The devil, however, is not done yet and scuppers her happiness once again.
Kneehigh deliver the tale with a characteristic sumptuous simplicity in a gorgeous production. Shot through with the blues – and Stuart McLoughlin’s charismatic hick of a devil really does get all the best tunes – it’s Deep South rolled into Black Forest. It could so easily have been cute – “sickening sentimental claptrap,” as the devil says – or worse, Burtonesque, but Kneehigh achieve the rawness of ripped flesh.
You really feel Bill Mitchell’s mud-soaked design, dominated by a funeral pyre tree and scattered leaves. Bright red hands, sometimes bandaged, pull painful focus. Again, Malcolm Rippeth’s lights swell like exposed nerve-endings. Beautiful and fervently performed, it’s engrossingly told. Credit too to Stu Baker’s heartfelt music and Carl Grose’s somersaulting text.
Only, because Kneehigh don’t dissect their story, your mind empties as your senses delight. Too many empty physical expressions of suffering and wildness simply aren’t painful or wild enough.
There are flashes of thought – the silence of the woman against the spluttered excuses of men; the passing of the role between three actresses (Audrey Brisson, Patrycja Kujawska and Éva Magyar) as a burden to be shared – but aesthetic never develops into a core motif and it’s never fully apparent why this story is told. At best, its an expression of life as time to be passed, whether by enduring suffering with dignity or diverting oneself with devilry.
Photograph: Steve Tanner
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