The Red Shoes
Choreographer and director: Matthew Bourne Conductor: Brett Morris
Sadler’s Wells, London EC1 (020-7863 8000) Until 29 January, then on tour until 17 June (www.new-adventures.net/ the-red-shoes) Running time: 2hrs (including interval)
For more than two decades, Matthew Bourne has been the master of popular yet innovative dance theatre, said Mark Monahan in The Daily Telegraph. But even by Bourne’s adventurous standards, taking on Powell and Pressburger’s 1948 film masterpiece is a “bold” move. “Isn’t taking this most deliriously cinematic of films and plonking it and its balletic subject matter back on a stage a ridiculous thing to do?” Maybe so – but the gamble pays off handsomely.
Bourne’s “enthralling” stage version follows the film’s plot closely, said David Jays in The Guardian. Ambitious ballerina Vicky Page is torn between the man she loves (a young composer) and the career she lives for – made flesh in the form of tyrannical impresario Lermontov. In terms of choreography, it is Bourne’s “most classical” work to date, said Debra Craine in The Times – even to the extent of using pointe shoes (albeit sparingly). In the film, the company performing the fictional Red Shoes ballet was modelled on Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. Here, the company becomes the postwar Sadler’s Wells, enabling Bourne to make “affectionate nods” to Frederick Ashton and Margot Fonteyn. His tribute to Le Train Bleu, in particular, is a “masterstroke of chic comedy”.
The stage pictures created in this production are “ravishing”, said Louise Levene in the FT. Lez Brotherston’s stunning design matches the film’s “bravura blend of stage, reality and fantasy” – with a giant gilded proscenium arch which revolves to take us “backstage”. Paule Constable’s “virtuoso” lighting adds drama and atmosphere. And the brilliant orchestration, by Terry Davies, involves a “revelatory collage” culled from the scores of Hollywood composer Bernard Herrmann.
The show’s weakness, if it has one, is that the storytelling is as yet a little unfocused, said Lyndsey Winship in the London Evening Standard. Still, this is a witty, fluid, beautiful production – and Ashley Shaw is “bewitching” as Vicky, the ingénue dancer.