Special thanks to Frederica Notley who opened our eyes to the joys of the Canadian Fringe Theatre Festivals where we performed Surviving Bluebeard in 1998. It was largely the experience of playing these Fringe Festivals that led to the creation of multi story.

We were drawn to the story of Bluebeard because of the dramatic framework it provides within which to explore aspects of marriage. Though the events of the story are extreme, there are fundamental questions raised by the tale – about control, personal space and growth, trust and curiosity, secrets and lies – that are part of the dynamic of most relationships.

Once upon a time such tales as Bluebeard were widely valued as a means of passing on wisdom and insight within a richly imaginative framework. In particular, many of them contained, for those who could read them right, important suggested strategies for negotiating personal, social and sexual relationships. Nowadays we are generally exposed to more overt and prosaically expressed guidance in these matters, in the form of Agony Aunts, Problem Pages and a whole range of magazines and manuals that tell us how to get it right – whatever the particular ‘it’ might be! But the metaphorical richness of the old tales continues to affect us in stranger and more profound ways than the quick-fix do-it-yourself articles and manuals that promote tick-box happiness.

We have drawn from three accounts of the Bluebeard story; those of Charles Perrault, Henri Pourrat and Clarrisa Pinkola Estes in her book Women Who Run With The Wolves. We have adapted or extracted articles in Best, New Woman, Woman’s Journal and Cosmopolitan. We have borrowed from a number of books on etiquette and from How To Plan A Wedding and 203 Ways to Drive a Man Wild in Bed. We have reframed the Anglo/American folk-tale, Mr Fox, the Peruvian tale of the Black Horseman and the Hebrew myth of Lilith, Adam and Eve. We quote from the Common Book of Prayer and The Taming of the Shrew.

We have adapted the source material freely. Not unnaturally, we have been particularly intrigued by those aspects of the story that chime with our own experience of the world we live in. Our personal histories and obsessions are inevitably reflected, however obliquely, in the choices we have made – though there is no straightforward biography going on!

As we built the play so the tellers of the tale – William and Mary – became more and more important. Until finally the play is about them and their own curious impulsions to bring the story of Bluebeard to life.

We hope you enjoy their journey.