Writer/performer Olivia Miller brings Mary Tudor again to life in Bloody Mary – Live! at VAULT Festival
“Raise your hand if you’ve imagined your parents having sex”
Bloody Mary – Live! sees author/performer Olivia Miller revisiting the historical past books to present the chapter dedicated to Mary Tudor a recent perspective by way of the lens of a raucous stand-up present. As she arrives onstage in a goth-inspired rise up and bovver boots, immediate parallels to Six spring to thoughts however as she asks us all who’s seen the present, she casually dismisses the eye dedicated to her “wicked stepmothers”, all 5 of them.
This back-and-forth with the viewers is a key a part of the present, drawing us in to share anecdotes about first kisses, household feuds and favorite villains, after which one-upping at each alternative. Paired up with a suitor for that first kiss at age simply 2, her father exiling her mom and forbidding her to ever see her once more, the lads in her father’s courtroom who blithely turned a blind eye to his behaviour and his remedy of her – she actually did have a tough experience.
There’s an enchanting take a look at the best way historic legacies are formed – Mary was the primary queen of England but that’s much less typically remembered than her sobriquet ‘Bloody’. Even with no up to date lens, her lack of company in her love life is stunning to behold. And we strategy the minor difficulty of spiritual purges, she factors out she was hardly the one monarch to indulge, although not all others essentially gleefully describes the scent being like a barbeque…
Miller maintains an effervescent power all through, clearly relaxed in coaxing audiences into play and riffing off the mad number of their responses. And Olivia Munk’s path retains issues taut because the gobby teenager we first meet step by step transforms right into a (nonetheless gobby) queen and the shadows that accompanied a lot of these earlier laughs solidify into one thing way more menacing.