Romance and murder tale The Bloody Ballad is a fusion of Americana music and slasher movie theatre.

Writer and performer Lucy Rivers cites Tom Waits and Nick Cave and films such as Badlands and Natural Born Killers as influences.

She had wanted to tell this gruesome love story using only musical ballads – like a concept album put on stage – but ended up slotting scenes in to break the gig out into theatre.

“The story is told through the music but also in a theatrical way,” she explains.

“So we have had audiences who wouldn’t normally come to see theatre and vice versa.

“We have tapped into something new, which has been really popular.”

The Bloody Ballad is inspired by an old Welsh gypsy folk tale – Mary Maid Of The Mill – but is relocated to Memorial Day in 1950s dustbowl America.

“The imagery seemed to fit. The sexual politics and that time of change, too. There is a lot of religious imagery in there, and then the music fits that time and place.

“I also felt that a dead-end town was right for these lost souls in what is essentially a love story.”

Rivers plays blood-spilling singer Mary, who loves to slice off digits and is on a beeline for revenge after her mundane, outsider’s life at her fathers’ gas station is interrupted by the arrival of a drifter called Connor.

“You’ll find anyone who has been slightly cut off as she has been would not fit to normal stereotypes,” is how Rivers describes the wronged protagonist.

She’s joined on stage by her Gagglebabble company colleague, Hannah McPake, as well as the live band, The Missing Fingers, which she fronts.

“You could call it a bit of a romp. There is a song I sing early on called What My Daddy Done In A Minor, which sets the tone. While it’s full of darkness, gore and death it also has this brilliant cheekiness.”