THE GUARDIAN
★★★★

Lucy Rivers’ show, inspired by the case of Ruth Ellis, hanged in 1955, uses a clever conceit to tell a story of music, murder and motherhood.

A microphone suddenly suggests a gun, and images of peroxide blondes – at times fragile and breathy, at others monstrous – flicker almost subliminally across the room in the latest piece of gig-theatre from Gagglebabble. It’s a glittering dark gem responding to the life and death of Ruth Ellis who was hanged in 1955 for shooting her faithless lover, David Blakely.

There is much to enjoy in this 90-minute piece written and performed by the truly astonishing Lucy Rivers with help from her neatly named band, the Bad Mothers. Ellis was accused of being a bad mother. But don’t go expecting a traditional narrative in an evening that comes wrapped in a conceit: the recording of a live album, inspired by Ellis, performed by a singer-songwriter who is in a troubled relationship with her controlling producer, also called David.

Sinners Club is never overt, always understated, working through music, atmosphere and illusion. It’s about the half-glimpsed and the half-connected – Ellis was friends with Vicki Martin who was involved with Stephen Ward of Profumo affair notoriety. The space feels liminal: part in the present but also soaked in the seedy glamour of the Mayfair club where Ellis worked.

It is like a series of half-solved clues in song form – Rivers’ Singer gradually reveals more of herself and the story through numbers that range from country to plaintive torch songs. Rivers rivets the attention as a woman fighting her fear of not being heard. “I can’t hear my voice,” she says, the panic rising. A microphone swings in the recording booth like an empty noose.

WHaT’s on stage
★★★★

The walls of the Sinners Club are covered in photos. Ruth Ellis looks out of them in black and white, platinum blonde with big, beautiful eyes. She looks a different woman in every picture. In one, she’s in stockings and suspenders, one leg cocked up on a chair, eyeing the camera seductively. In another, she smiles out like Marilyn Monroe. Sometimes she looks like a society belle, at others a sweetheart, and elsewhere a call girl. She was all and none of the above.

Ellis was the last woman to be executed in Great Britain. She went to the gallows on 13 July 1955, convicted of murdering her lover David Blakely. For a while beforehand, though, she was the scourge of the tabloid press: her death sentence splashed across the front pages, ‘RUTH ELLIS TO HANG’; her face staring out below. No wonder; Ellis’ story had all the salaciousness and shock factor to shift papers back then (and now, for that matter). An ex-escort with movie star looks who murders her man? Catnip on Fleet Street.

Sinners Club doesn’t exonerate her exactly, but it does offer reappraisal. Ellis accepted her fate. “An eye for an eye,” she told reporters; one death deserves another. But her crime sprang from the very same principle. For years, Blakely had beaten her, cheated on her and sexually abused one of her daughters. Ellis mightn’t be quite the woman she was paraded as.

Gagglebabble’s intimate cabaret musical – an immersive gig, if you prefer – rattles through Ellis’ life in a rather abstract way. Rather than biographical timeline, Lucy Rivers’ songs explore aspects of her character. We’re privy to a live concept album recording, where Rivers and her band The Bad Mothers are overseen by an overbearing unseen producer, a mic’d up voice and an eye on proceedings, who keeps overriding and belittling his female star.

Instead of clear narrative, meaning mostly comes through tone. Rivers’ songs are shot through with sounds of Americana, turning a tawdry gutter press tale into something more swaggering: proper old pulp fiction. Sinners Club lifts Ellis out of one tradition and into another, transforming the Soho slapper of the red-tops into some kind of glam, freewheeling outlaw – Bonnie minus Clyde, a rebel without a cause. It almost celebrates her as a sexual revolutionary – the woman who took the fight back to the patriarchy – though Rivers never entirely absolves her or lets her off the hook.

As bio-musicals go, it’s not dissimilar to Neon Neon’s Praxis Makes Perfect – smart politics set to pop – and one or two of Rivers songs are real stadium pleasers, all the more potent squeezed into the back room of a pub for Titas Halder’s production. Rivers is riveting too: cracked and fabulous, wry and ferocious. She sings a peach of a bruised love song and blasts out a howl of vengeful emotion. A woman’s place is in the Sinners Club.

THE STAGE

Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be executed in Britain. Sinners Club by Lucy Rivers is immersive gig theatre where the audience are invited into a live recording of a concept album about Ellis by rock band The Bad Mothers.

Directed by Titas Halder, and co-produced with Gagglebabble and Theatr Clwyd, the extent to which the show’s combination of songs and episodic narrative actually tells the convicted woman’s story is relatively limited.

The rich and soulful vocals of Rivers, however, in the central role, are one of the production’s main strengths. In terms of lyrics and plotting, the show is at its best when highlighting the hypocrisy of, say, the upper-class men that frequent Ellis’ nightclub.

There are moments of incoherence. A case in point is when Rivers, kitted out in a fantastically flamboyant feathered costume, resembling Carmen Miranda dressed as a magpie, recites a long figurative poem about women and birds. It’s a great costume undoubtedly, but the text gets a little lost.

Mark Bailey’s design transforms the Other Room’s performance space into a 1950s dive bar crossed with a recording studio. Florescent lettering spells out “an eye for an eye” and an image of a pistol provides a clever nod to Ellis’ fate, while the woman in question stares out at the audience from several picture frames.

Rivers sings with the ease that most people use to breathe. The show is worth it for her performance alone. But if you’re looking for insights into women and criminal justice then you’d be better off in the library.

British Theatre Guide

The tragic tale of Rhyl-born Ruth Ellis has fascinated the public ever since it came to light. The last woman to be judicially executed in Britain, in 1955, for the murder of her lover, her case inspired much media comment at the time, and was amongst those which helped garner public support for the abolition of the death penalty.

The plot of the 1956 movie Yield To The Night, starring fellow blonde icon Diana Dors, was somewhat similar to Ellis’s story (apparently coincidentally); the biographical 1985 film Dance With A Stranger introduced the world to Miranda Richardson; and more recently, Amanda Whittington’s more avowedly feminist take on the tale, The Thrill Of Love has played nationwide, and on BBC Radio.

Sinners Club (no apostrophes) is the first production in the spring season at The Other Room; a season entitled Outliers. A product of the fertile mind of Lucy Rivers, one of Wales’s cleverest hyphenates—actress-dramatist-singer-songwriter-musician—this is an innovative spin on the tale, using her company Gagglebabble’s preferred genre of gig-theatre (cf The Bloody Ballad, The Forsythe Sisters, Wonderman).

Thus, as we enter the smoky performance space, we find ourselves, courtesy of Mark Bailey’s set design, in a relatively cosy recording-studio, where three musicians—Aidan Thorne (bass guitar), Tom Cottle (drums) and Dan Messore (guitar and effects)—are bantering and tuning up. Presently, the exotically-clad singer—Rivers—arrives, greets them, and addresses the audience, thanking us for taking part in this experiment.

The conceit is that this is a live recording of a concept album, inspired by the story of Ruth Ellis. The band is the wittily-named Bad Mothers, and it quickly becomes clear that the lead singer identifies strongly—perhaps a little too strongly—with Ruth. The fifth character, who we hear but don’t see, is the session’s producer David. He shares a name with Ellis’s victim, and seems similarly dismissive of the singer’s emotions and ambitions.

While Sinners Club uses Ellis’s story as its spine, it is far from being a conventional musical. Rivers’s powerful songs, ranging in style from torch balladry to plaintive country to bluesy rock, tend to be meditative—a recurring theme being hopeless love—rather than narrative. The metaphor (both lyrically and visually) of the heroine as a beautiful bird who flies too far from her nest is a seductive one.

Director Titas Halder oversees an informal atmosphere, at least amongst the supporting musicians, such that the singer’s intensity is all the more striking. Katy Morison’s lighting design unsettles; Sam Jones’s soundtrack incorporates interview segments evoking sexual abuse; Nic Finch’s video projections show us contemporaneous film clips of other ill-fated platinum blondes. One prominent screen bears the words “An Eye For An Eye”, prefiguring Ellis’s fate.

An over-familiarity with the original story is perhaps a disadvantage, since it leads one to anticipate violent and melodramatic events which Rivers’s script suggests, but which are not explicitly shown. Perhaps the production steers clear of luridness out of respect for Ellis’s real-life trauma, but it still feels as though opportunities for emotionally resonant theatrical spectacle have been missed.

Sinners Club is a deceptively subtle, low-key take on an unhappy life, notable for a magnetic central performance.

Arts Scene in Wales

Co-founder of Gagglebabble Theatre Company Lucy Rivers has created a heady evening of music, drama, and manic entertainment in her story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Ellis’ story is one of utter heartache at every turn, which in Rivers’ rendition at least is endured with feistiness and glamour.

Set in a 1950s “dive” bar come recording studio, the set has influences of an American speakeasy (or at least the Hollywood representation of one) – the intimacy, the bluesy aesthetic, and booze all attributing factors.  Mark Bailey has done an excellent job here in thinking about how the narrative moves from the dramatic to the comedic to the downright tragic. The design provides various platforms and levels in the small space of the Other Room, in order for Rivers to set up tropes she can come back again and again– creating narrative hooks in the wonderful mayhem of the performance. Examples of this include the recording booth for private moments between Ruth and David, to the band equipment box that Rivers stands upon for the more dramatic statements of the piece. This is complimented by Katy Morison’s clever lighting design, which has to deal with the speedy fluidity of the piece.

The narrative is very much dependant on and crafted out of the music played by Rivers’ sensational band The Bad Mothers (Tom Cottle, Dan Messore, Aidan Thorne). The music goes from soul to country, which supports Rivers’ wonderfully soulful voice.  It would be apt enough to call the show a ‘music play’ if you need to label it but I often worry that labelling can turn some people off things they should really be seeing.  Think of Hedwig and the Angry Inch meets Greg Wohead; Sinners Club has the rawness and pain of Hedwig and the brilliant story telling quality of Wohead’s work.

What we get of Ruth Ellis’ story is mainly in the songs, which is punctuated by dialogue with the invisible David Blakely and interactions with the audience. These moments of interaction provide much of the comedy of the night but it is never used in a tacky or abrupt way that you often get with less thought through interactions.  This includes interactions with and between the band members, all of who are brilliant in their moment to moment delivery.

Under the direction of Titas Halder this hazy evening’s entertainment holds together beautifully, which in itself is a fine achievement because of the sheer amount of things going on. The result is that we feel that we are spending the evening with Ruth herself in her mixed up world.

Apart from writing and composing this piece, Lucy Rivers puts in a virtuoso performance. The moment she arrives in the room she exudes attitude and confidence. Her embodiment of Ruth evolves and aptly straddles brokenness and triumph. Rivers is stunning in this.

Apart from its storytelling qualities this show is pure entertainment and is as good as a gig as it is theatre.

Wales Arts Review

If you’ve ever wondered what it is like to be inside a concept album Sinners Club is probably the closest you can get. Gagglebabble return after the success with Wonderman, this time to The Other Room in a co-production with Theatr Clwyd. With more similarity to 2013’s The Bloody Ballad, again love and murder and placing a woman at centre stage in both performance and narrative are all present. In Sinners Club the band, The Bad Mothers, are weaving the tale of Ruth Ellis, last woman to be hanged, while also working out some issues of their own. They invite the audience into their live studio recording of their new album to tell Ruth’s story – plus, as star and song-writer Lucy Rivers teases at the start, ‘a little something extra just for you’.

The audience certainly do get something extra, being more a part of the show than perhaps many bargained for. The term ‘immersive’ is thrown at every other theatrical production it seems, but Sinners Club truly does create a world that the audience is an integral part of, without feeling forced or artificial. Audience participation is also something that seems to be omnipresent – and something that can be a painful experience for all involved. In Sinners Club, however, the audience feel from the start that they are at The Sinners Club, watching The Bad Mothers record their album, so when Rivers proffers a leg for you to pull a boot off, or gives you an instrument to hold it feels natural.

In terms of performance Sinners Club is faultless. From the moment you enter the smoky, low lit recording studio that The Other Room has transformed into, from the first note that Lucy Rivers belts out to the last. Everything about the experience director Titas Halder has created truly brings the audience into the world. Halder has helped the band create a performance that is dynamic, with energy that pulls in and whips along the audience with the increasingly frantic energy of the band.

The musical element of the show is of the high standard those familiar with the work of Gagglebabble have now come to expect. Writer/composer Lucy Rivers leads Dan Messore (Guitar) Aidan Thorne (Bass) and Tom Cottle (Drums) across 90 minutes of music that would give long established bands a run for their money. As a gig experience it outstripped many a night at Clwb Ifor Bach. Rivers performance is both mesmerising and intriguing. On one hand, she delivers the musical elements of the performance with skill, while simultaneously delivering the emotional undercurrent and performance of the theatre within the gig.

The question of what is the emotional undercurrent, (or more accurately what is beneath the music), is a difficult question to answer, and one element in which Sinners Club falls short. Drawing on the story of Ruth Ellis, whose images look down from the walls of the studio, as if watching the performance of her life unfold, her story feels unresolved. In one respect the blurring of lines between Ruth’s story, the band’s story and perhaps some wider reflections on life, can remain obtuse. However, early in the performance Rivers sets out clearly Ellis’ story as integral to what the band (and we assume the show as a whole) is setting out to do. This element becomes lost fairly quickly, and references to Ellis’ story become more elliptical. And although Rivers wrote the music which accompanies, and theoretically tells the story, there is little for the audience to grasp onto to tie the elements together. While it’s not necessary to spell out the story, the audience needs a little more to go on at times.

This is in part linked to the nature of the performance; Gagglebabble are creating a new kind of theatrical experience with their ‘Gig Theatre’. It’s a brave, innovative and a fascinating idea and experience. However, it is an idea that feels like it’s still developing. In form, existing in a space between a play and a musical theatre/plays with music. It’s a new format that needs perhaps to continue to borrow more from its forerunners – musical theatre is not just big sets and Andrew Lloyd Webber after all, and gig theatre feels like it should sit with our contemporary indie musicals. But to do that the gig element needs to serve story in the way musical theatre music – when done right – serves the story. In the same way plays can have moments of incohesiveness  to serve emotion, as long as audiences are given enough to emotionally connect, the gig in ‘Gig Theatre’ needs to let an audience tie things together, to take enough away to feel really satisfied. These are critiques that can be made only because the format is already so strong; Sinners Club feels like a piece that really flies – hitting the kind of immersive buttons that make it feel like the best of something Punchdrunk would create. Bringing in music that would be at home in any gig – better in fact than many bands you’d see at an average gig, and tying this together in a theatrical experience. It’s a brave, bold and importantly truly enjoyable evening.

This production is made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Wales.
Photography by Kieran Cudlip