The Bride and Good Night Cinderella showing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall for just two nights is not easy viewing. Ten years ago, Brazilian performer and director Carolina Bianchi was drugged and sexually assaulted. Her extraordinary performance in this production deals with rape and the violence against woman.

Alone, against a virginal white back drop with white props and wearing a white suit stands Bianchi microphone in hand. She reads from a stack of papers in Portuguese while paintings, photos, and English subtitles appear on the screen behind, sharing the history of rape and femicide. The guttural nature of the Portuguese language adds a level of aggression to an already intense experience.

The work was inspired by the killing of 33-year-old Italian performance artist, Pippa Bacca, murdered by a driver when hitchhiking from Italy to Jerusalem dressed as a bride. Throughout the work Bianchi berates Bacca for her whiteness and naivete.

Thirty minutes into the two-and-a-half-hour performance Bianchi prepares a drink. We are told it is a date rape drug known in Brazil as “Good Night Cinderella” which will render her unconscious for the rest of the performance. We watch as she becomes increasingly incoherent and performs a chilling karaoke style song before finally succumbing to sleep. Sadly, no subtitles were available for the lyrics as some of the audience with knowledge of Portugues found it amusing.

As she settles on the desk, the Bianchi’s Cara de Cavalo dance troupe appear and take down the white screen. Unravelling the replacement black plastic sheet, they reveal a black car with the registration “Fuck Catharsis”. The car, silently watching, in the blackness, becomes the site of simulated violence, sex and invasion. Bianchi is changed into a nightgown and put on a mattress. The ensemble, after pouring tequila over both themselves and Bianchi’s body, start their fevered party scene like Dante’s Inferno, imitating orgies and violence, gyrating and pulsating.

Bianchi‘s body was carried, dragged and moved around the stage surrounded by graves. The final invasion, in the closing scenes, Bianchi is penetrated by a camera, the inside of her projected onto large screens above. 

Although Bianchi’s falling asleep is an interesting idea, the show loses much of its momentum because of her absence in the second half. Nevertheless, her presence is felt, as her sleeping figure on stage continues to exert a haunting influence over the performance.

Strangely compelling and deeply disturbing.

4 Stars

Reviewed by Nina Gardner.

Photo credit Christophe Raynaud de Lage.

Showing at Queen Elizabeth Hall September 17th & 18th 1925.

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/the-bride-and-the-goodnight-cinderella/

https://takemesomewhere.co.uk/carolina-bianchi