Bluebeard – DEFIANT THEATRE

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ACTION MOVIE: THE PLAY: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT >>

by Charles Ludlam
directed by Jim Slonina
at Victory Gardens Theatre Downstairs Studio
March 11 – April 17, 1999

“Gleefully indulges Ludlam’s cheese-ball side… Gloriously awful.”
Chicago Reader

“A shared culture of B-movie proportions while being lovingly, and skillfully, over-the-top theatrical.”
Newcity

“A colorful diversion. Or is that perversion?… Full of wit and energy, it’s well worth checking out.”
Windy City Times

Bluebeard is a comedy for boys, girls, and everyone else.

Intercourse is old hat. Buggery bores Bluebeard. And chastity makes him abuse the servants. The fiend has littered his private island with sexual misfits, his botched attempts to create a third genital, a new mystery of love and sex. When his innocent, yet fortuitously beautiful niece visits, Bluebeard has one last chance to challenge nature’s inadequate options.

Bluebeard was the second Charles Ludlam play that Defiant had produced and the second play directed by Jim Slonina (the first being The Mystery of Irma Vep, also by Ludlam). It was also the second Defiant play in a row in which Ted Lesley portrayed the title character (the first being Dracula).