Interview: Little Bulb Theatre on ‘Orpheus’

This week at Bristol Old Vic the inventive, beguiling and frankly brilliant Little Bulb Theatre take us back to 1930s Paris, where legendary musician Django Reinhardt has been cast as the lead in a new production of Orpheus.
Your host for the evening is the charismatic songstress Yvette Pépin. With her troupe of operatic players she performs the thrilling tale of Orpheus’s ill-fated descent into the underworld to reclaim his lost love, Eurydice.
Told through song and mime and set to a live score of hot club jazz, opera and French chanson, Orpheus is a musical re-imagining of the tragic Greek myth. Here’s performer Clare Beresford to tell us more.

So, what is it about the Orpheus story and Django Reinhardt that demanded to go together? 
Alex our director and Dom, who plays Django, have both loved Django Reinhardt for years. I think in the back of Alex’s head he’d wanted to make a piece about Django for a long time, but poor Dom was a bit shocked when Alex first announced that he had him in mind to fill his shoes.  
The Orpheus myth, on the other hand, is simply a timeless story that resonated with us all. As a company we are obsessed with music and its ability to transport people somewhere else and to express concepts we find impossible to convey with words alone. Orpheus is a beautiful love story culminating in a very simple human mistake that we can all relate to. The fact that Django had such a devil-may-care attitude linked so well with Orpheus. Musicianship can get you so far but it can’t make you a perfect human being.

What are the key elements of the Orpheus story that make it so absorbing (and so stageable)?
There are so many different versions of the Orpheus myth, and we were attracted to the idea of a story with a lot of flexibility. We could experiment with different elements and pick and choose the key narrative moments that made sense for our interpretation.
Obviously Orpheus’ fatal look back towards his wife Eurydice, just as they are coming up out of the Underworld, is the crux of the piece and writing the music for that was a very emotional experience. But music is a constant presence in Orpheus’s life, so the whole story demands a rich musical score, and that is a challenge that always excites us.   

Little Bulb have been going for nearly a decade now. Have you developed in that time, or stayed true to your original DNA?
Well, we are certainly wiser about what can be achieved in a certain amount of time and better at not saying yes to too many things (although not much!). Thanks to Farnham Maltings, we are also much more knowledgeable about the business side of things: but, at heart, we haven’t changed too much.
The people and the work are still by far the most important thing: sharing a story that we care about to an audience we care about. That’s why we do what we do. Also, we’re all really close friends so going to work is also hanging out with your best mates.  It’s especially fun in Orpheus because there are so many of us. We’re really excited about touring together. 

You always go down well in Bristol. Is there a synergy between Little Bulb’s style and Bristol’s cultural tastes?
We’re huge fans of Bristol. In fact, a couple of us have considered moving here, we love it so much. The artistic community is fantastic: so much theatre, live music and art going on, everyone so supportive of each other. We’re lucky that we get such great audiences here and we have Ali Robertson of the Tobacco Factory to thank for that. He persuaded us to come and do our first Bristol run years ago and we’ve never looked back.
After London, Bristol is probably the city we’ve performed in most, and we’re coming back again at soon to do another children’s Christmas show for Bristol Old Vic, The Night that Autumn Turned to Winter.

Orpheus is at Bristol Old Vic from Wednesday, September 23 to Saturday, September 26. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/orpheus.html

Top pic: James Allan