Bijou – A Cabaret of Secrets and Seduction.

A 1932 photograph by the Hungarian-French photographer Brassaï  (Gyula Halász)of a bejewelled but scowling elderly woman in the Bar du Tribunal in Paris was the initial inspiration for Chrissie Shaw’s show.  The photographer included the woman, whom he dubbed with cruel irony La Mome Bijou, in his renowned collection Paris du Nuit.  (‘Mome’ can mean ‘kid’ or ‘youngster’ or even ‘chick’.)  The woman apparently showed up at the bar every night, bedecked with all her jewellery.  She read palms and told stories, but who knows what the stories were and how much was fact, and how much was fantasy.  Brassaïdidn’t question her: he got his pictures and was on his way.  Ms Shaw’s show is therefore a mix of history and more or less plausible guesswork, interwoven with (too many) melodies and songs from the 1870s to 1930s: Duparc, Debussy, Poulenc, Satie, Brecht/Weill, and so on. 

With this starting point you might infer that the story of Madame Bijou would be fascinating but also one that would pluck at the heartstrings.   It’s a tale of the survival of a woman who – it turns out – suffers one misfortune after another at the hands of men, lives through the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, and yet survives, only to end with naught but her jewels and her memories in the Bar du Tribunal. 

Except for some simpler moments, however, when the show flares into life (such as Bijou as a child witnessing the death of her father), the potential is not realised.  Firstly, Ms Shaw and her director/dramaturg Susan Pilbeam choose to tell Bijou’s story in a non-linear fashion, a decision that feels arbitrary and misjudged.  It’s not just confusing, it sacrifices cause and effect.  (I overheard a young couple afterwards trying to work out which character was which and when they came into the story.  They were not alone.)   For example, Bijou is raped by a village priest when she’s eleven and has a child by him.  Way later in the show, she’s twenty-five and running a high class brothel in Paris – and her chief client is that same priest now a cardinal (?); he doesn’t recognise her, but she supplies him with virgins.  There should be tension and horror in this, but instead we get no more than a muted irony.  Then, later still, we jump back in time: now she’s twenty-two and chatelaine of a castle in Germany…  There are various lovers who come and go and although Bijou bounces back, a certain predictability weighs things down.  The songs should knit things together, but too often they are ‘period flavour’ rather than comment on the fractured narrative.  Pianist Alan Hicks, in his first theatrical appearance apparently, has some of the best moments: he plays nicely, he is enigmatic and he sings and recites with a reticent charm.

Victoria Worley’s 1930s costume is detailed and beautiful: the cloche hat, the coat, the dress, the laced corset, the suspender belt and the petticoat – and the jewels bien sure.  Why it is necessary for Ms Shaw to shed all but the petticoat and the jewels and to get audience members to help isn’t too clear.  Also rather puzzling is Gillian Schwab’s lighting, which eschews the isolating ‘pool of light’ and often involves bringing up the house lights to no real purpose.

But then Ms Shaw herself, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the original La Mome Bijou, lacks the very qualities this show needs.  Ms Shaw opts for grumpy, irritable and complaining.  It’s hard to say whether her singing is deliberately a sad comment on a woman who can no longer sing or just the way Ms Shaw sings.  What Bijou’s story needs is some oomph, charisma and sexuality – and not awkward gestures toward the last.  (I can imagine the show, with a better script, played by someone like Arletty with her knowing, ironic cynicism that is amused, tender and never sinks to whining.)  As told here, Bijou’s misfortunes have no bite because, really, we don’t care.

The motives behind the one-person (sometimes with a musician) show based on a ‘real’ person are usually fascination with, and admiration for, a complex but important historical figure – a leading politician, say, or a writer, or artist.  Or it might be to drag an unknown figure out of the shadows and body them forth on stage.  There is also the motive of the performance artist who is between engagements and cooks up a show to create some work for herself.  This might be the case here.  In any case, there needs to be a point to telling the ‘true’ story – otherwise it’s merely true – ‘interesting’, perhaps, but so what?

Michael Brindley