Love, obsession and art
They’re all there in Matthew Bourne’s stage twist on the 1948 film ‘The Red Shoes.’
British choreographer Matthew Bourne and his company New Adventures return to the Ahmanson Theatre, where his breakthrough version of “Swan Lake” had its U.S. premiere 20 years ago. This time, they’re bringing Bourne’s biggest production, a stage version of “The Red Shoes.”
Based on the 1948 Emeric Pressburger-Michael Powell film, which incorporates Hans Christian Andersen’s original fairy tale, “The Red Shoes” has elements that have attracted Bourne throughout his career: love, obsession and art. As a bonus for a dance adaptation of a movie, the characters are with a traveling ballet troupe.
“The Red Shoes” had been on a kind of bucket list for Bourne for decades. He has kept the story’s broad outlines the same: Ingenue ballerina Vicky Page is being groomed for stardom by the ballet company’s autocratic director, Boris Lermontov. But she falls in love with composer Julian Craster and is forced to choose between her two loves: her art and her man.
The movie features a Who’s Who of ballet personalities, including Moira Shearer as Vicky, Robert Helpmann as a company principal dancer (he also choreographed the ballet sequences) and Léonide Massine, who was unforgettable as the shoemaker in the 15-minute “Red Shoes” fantasy ballet sequence. The movie was shot in Technicolor, and Bourne designer Lez Brotherston uses some of those rich hues in the stage adaptation’s scenery and costumes.
Finally, Bourne and orchestrator Terry Davies created a score using works by composer Bernard Herrmann, who worked with Alfred Hitchcock. But don’t expect any throbbing chords from “Psycho.” Instead Bourne and Davies selected Herrmann music from the 1930s and ’40s, including “Citizen Kane” and “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.” calendar@latimes.com