She dances. She dances alone. Always alone. Always twisting away just out of reach – ever beyond your touch, beyond your embrace, beyond your gaze” Read more …
Birds of Paradise Theatre Company present the world premier of Crazy Jane – the story of Jane Avril, star of the Moulin Rouge and immortalised in Toulouse Lautrec’s iconic posters.
Jane invites you in to her life where she will tell you of her extraordinary journey from the back streets and brothels of Paris via the asylum wards of the Salpêtrière Asylum and on to the palace of women, the Moulin Rouge. Join her, Professor Charcot and his junior staff Drs Freud, Tourette, Jung and Alzheimer in the waltz of modern psychiatry, popularly known as The Fools Dance.
Crazy Jane is a spectacular theatre, dance event with an original razor sharp score by Scottish hip hop artists Hector Bizerk.
Flawed but watchable, and Jessica Brettle and Sergey Jakovsky's set and lighting looks gorgeous, evoking Paris at its most enigmatic.
This is a spectacle brought to life by the design and soundtrack; a unique and imaginative experience. Encore une fois s’il vous plaît.
The show is sustained, though, by two wonderful performances from Rachel Drazek and Pauline Knowles as the younger and older Jane, both acting and dancing with a rare, haunting power and sadness.
Culminating in a excellent dance sequence that celebrates Jane's triumph over adversity, Crazy Jane is a impressive production that uses a historical setting to take a contemporary look at the perception of disability in society.
Nicola McCartney’s play about Jane Avril is staged with a restless combination of back projections, dance routines and multiple languages.
There are compensations in Sergey Jakovsky’s atmospheric video projections and some fine colour lighting from Brettle, but you’re left longing for some of the kinetic energy of Lautrec’s iconic posters or of Baz Luhrmann’s dizzying 2001 feature-length pop video, Moulin Rouge!
A dancing, twisting, hypnotic experience, only fractionally let down by a slightly slow start, and a cast of varying ability.
Nicola McCartney--Crazy Jame
On Tour, from Thursday May 28, 2015, until Saturday June 13, 2015.