Cinderella - Review

Sadler's Wells, London

*****

Music by Prokofiev

Directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne

Liam Mower and Ashley Shaw

Witty, gothic and yet strangely enchanting, Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella returns to Sadler’s Wells for the festive season before heading out on tour. Where last year’s Christmas offering from Bourne’s New Directions company was The Red Shoes, this year it’s all about the glass (or rather, the sparkling diamanté) slippers as the classic fairytale, scored by Prokofiev is translated onto London during the Blitz of 1940.

Bourne’s Second World War staging was first aired in 1997, before a revival in 2010 leading to this 2017 slightly re-worked reprise and it makes for an uncompromising interpretation of the famous yarn. The best fairytales have always melded magic with monstrosity and Bourne’s vision upholds that fusion as goodness fights to triumph over evil.

The psychodrama here however is harrowing. We all know how the tale traditionally pans out, the wickedness of its opening chapters defining Cinderella’s family. Bourne however takes the darkness deeper. One of Cinderella’s step-brothers attempts to molest her, her stepmother tries to murder her and even the show’s hero - in this narrative a downed RAF pilot - is shown to be both physically and morally flawed.

In removing the traditional "royalty and castle" from the story, Bourne still preserves the classic three acts. The first depicts Cinderella’s domestic misery. The second, famously the Ball, is here shifted to London’s Café de Paris on the night that the venue was (as tragically occurred in real life) bombed during a German air raid.

The third sees the pilot searching London’s streets and tube station blitz shelters for the beautiful woman whose shimmering slipper he retained after she was taken away injured from the explosion. Bourne lobs in some novel twists, but rest assured there’s a pleasingly happy ending.

Ashley Shaw again assumes the responsibility of leading ballerina, in the title role and, as in The Red Shoes, is magnificent. Without referencing the technical intricacies of Bourne’s choreography, suffice to say that Shaw translates poetry into movement. Her love, desire and fears are all exquisitely portrayed in a performance that appears as exhaustingly athletic as it is artistically beautiful.

Opposite Shaw is Andrew Monaghan as Harry, the Pilot. Wounded and bomber-jacketed, he’s not the fairytale’s handsome Prince, rather a decently loving (and beautifully danced) everyman, who falls for the downtrodden heroine.

There’s not a fairy godmother to be found here. Instead, Liam Mower dances The Angel, gifted with magical powers to make Cinderella’s wish come true. Mower too is magnificent.

Amongst an excellent cast, a nod to Michela Meazza as Sybil the Stepmother. Bourne’s programme notes acknowledge a reference in Sybil to the 1940’s screen legend Joan Crawford – and Meazza beautifully embodies the aura of Crawford’s cruel mystique.

The influence of cinema again pervades Bourne’s work. There is a broad monochrome ambience throughout, interspersed with vivid flashes of colour, alongside assorted hints to movie classics that captured the 1940s. The reference to Brief Encounter in the final act (albeit without the standard Rachmaninov soundtrack) is a particular treat.

Bourne's dark interpretation of the story sits at odds with our expectations of the Cinderella narrative. But the challenge is a good one that creates a stunning interpretation that holds a mirror up to ourselves. Catch it now at Sadler’s Wells – or make every effort to see this enchanting ballet as it tours the country.

Runs until 27th January 2018, then tours. Touring dates here.

Photo credit: Johan Persson

The Red Shoes - Review

Sadler's Wells, London


*****


Based on the film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
and the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale
Music by Bernard Herrmann
Directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne

Ashley Shaw

The influences of cinema on Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes are everywhere. Walking into Sadler's Wells one sees that the stage is hidden behind an old style cinema curtain. The impression is both enchanting and effective, for Bourne’s latest offering is, in its elements, a ballet about a movie, about a ballet.

In the way that, back in 1948, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger created the Oscar winning movie that itself had been inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale - so too, nearly 70 years later has Bourne taken that movie and re-imagined it onto the dance stage. 

But this ballet is so much more than a glorious re-imagining of a classic film - for where Powell and Pressburger invited Brian Easdale to score the movie, Bourne has actually shifted his musical focus to Easdale's contemporary (and fellow Academy Award winner) Bernard Herrmann - and assisted by Terry Davies' magnificent orchestrations, a new musical composition for the ballet has been carefully stitched together, drawn entirely from Hermann's scores. The choice of music is inspired - and as cigarette smoke hangs in the air of nearly every scene, whilst the shoes may be red, the very essence of this production is noir.

The story revolves around Victoria Page, prima ballerina in the Ballet Lermontov and her role within "The Red Shoes" ballet within a ballet. The first half spills across locations in London and Monte Carlo and as Page moves closer to the first half's closing routine of the Red Shoes ballet itself, a doomed love triangle emerges. Boris Lermontov burns with an unrequited jealous desire for his star. Page however only has eyes for Julian Craster (Lermontov's orchestra conductor) and it is clear that both she and Craster are madly in love with each other.

Act Two tracks the trio across Europe and as much as Bourne's visionary choreography relates the narrative, so too does Lez Brotherston's stage design, with curves of balustrade immediately evoking the French Riviera. Brotherston draws upon the simplest concepts of design, married to 21st century technology. Suspended from a gantry, that itself moves across the stage in a way that the Starlight Express designers could only have dreamed of, the aforementioned cinema curtains evolve into the proscenium arches of opera houses, before melding into tugged back glimpses of the triangle's respective boudoirs as passions smoulder. Elsewhere, Brotherston’s evocation of a Monte Carlo steam engine is every bit as effective as his creation of a Mississippi steamboat for Sheffield's Showboat last Christmas.

But the beauty of a Bourne ballet is the visionary dance. As Victoria Page, Ashley Shaw drives the show, a mixture of poised passion and pathos. Bourne coaxes so much expression from her, both facial and in her movement, that the story flows effortlessly. Sam Archer and Dominic North as Lermontov and Craster respectively offer equally poised and perfectly weighted support to Page's arc. 

The Red Shoes Ballet sequence itself is of course enchanting. Duncan McLean’s projections providing a eerily ethereal backdrop to Bourne’s interpretation of the fairy tale. Alongside Shaw, Michela Meazza, Liam Mower and Glenn Graham as key dancers in the Ballet Lermontov provide a perfect complement to the story's detail. 

Sold out at Sadler's Wells for the rest of the run, a continued bravo to Sir Matthew and his New Adventures company for spending the next six gruelling months on the road, touring The Red Shoes around the UK. Whether one is a lifelong ballet devotee, or completely new to the genre, the show is unmissable. Kill to get a ticket!

Runs until 29th January 2017 - Then on tour. Tour details here

Photo credit: Johan Persson