LORD OF THE FLIES

LORD OF THE FLIES

New Adventures and Re-Bourne at Sadler's Wells

11.10.2014

Golding's cautionary tale has been staged before [ and filmed twice ]. Now it's an inspired dance piece from Matthew Bourne's New Adventures and Re:Bourne.

Adapted, with typically creative perversity by Bourne and his co-director Scott Ambler, it retains characters and events from the novel, and successfully captures its spirit, despite giving the island the elbow and stranding these lost boys on the cavernous stage of a deserted playhouse.

As we take our seats, the excited buzz is echoed through the open scene dock; it builds in a crescendo of whistles and rioting before the choirboys, smartly regimented, come marching in.

The fixtures and fittings are imaginatively pressed into service – costume rails, wicker skips, fire buckets. The conch is a [Shell] oil drum, Piggy is crushed by a massive lamp dropped from the flies. The boys forage for crisps and icecreams.

Bare feet, bullying, tribalism mark the breakdown of civilization. We see violent subjugation, a showdown, and a tsunami of rubbish thrown down onto the stage before the UN blue beret rides to the rescue. The teddy bear, who's survived it all, is abandoned with the last vestige of innocence as the boys troop off the way they came in, leaving Ralph [Sam Archer] to ponder the catastrophic events played out on the jungle stage.

Much of the dancing is visceral and strongly rhythmic. Simon, the dreamer, beautifully danced by Layton Williams, has a wonderful solo with cello accompaniment [Robin Mason, presumably the only live musician against the pulsing back track – the score, by Terry Davies, moving from choral to wild clamour]. He's joined by Ralph and Piggy [Sam Plant] in a tender pas-de-trois.

The death of Simon – washed out to sea like Piggy in the book – is superbly done, and the Beast [ a zombie corpse ? a passing vagrant ? ] is genuinely terrifying, not least when he is brought to life by the tiny witness. Jack, the feral baddie set against Ralph's reasonableness, is a physically expressive Danny Reubens.

The Wells is just one stop on a national tour, recruiting 22 boys at each port of call. A dream opportunity for them, and for the audience an amazing realization of an iconic story.

SWAN LAKE

SWAN LAKE

Matthew Bourne's Adventures in Motion Pictures at Sadler's Wells

25.01.14

Back home at the Wells before another UK tour, this stunningly original Swan Lake continues to attract balletomanes and balletophobes alike,

Using Tchaikowsky's familiar score [though not necessarily in the right order], it tells the story of a Prince escaping from his dull existence and from his overbearing Mother (Michela Meazza) into the caring embrace of the Swan [Chris Trenfield]. It begins and ends in his regal bed – dreams and nightmares never far away. The famous troupe of male swans swooping and perching on the bed one of the most indelible images of a piece strong on imagery.

There's plenty of fun, too: the old-fashioned ballet – precisely the ossified style that Bourne rejects – the nightclub, the preening teenage Cygnets, and the Prince's unsuitable girlfriend [Kerry Biggin].

In a delightful life-imitating-art felicity, the Prince is now played, with effortless charm, by Liam Mower, the original Billy Elliott in the stage show, already a Bourne regular and still only 21.

With stunning designs - Lez Brotherston – and a superb and versatile ensemble, this wild and witty piece looked very much at home at Sadler's Wells; already a classic of the contemporary dance repertoire.

SLEEPING BEAUTY – A GOTHIC ROMANCE

SLEEPING BEAUTY 
– A GOTHIC ROMANCE

New Adventures at Sadler's Wells

23.01.13

Matthew Bourne's long-awaited completion of his Tchaikowsky trilogy comes to Sadler's Wells for a sell-out season, part of a tour which started down in Plymouth, and moves on via Milton Keynes to Moscow.

The specially recorded score sounds lush, but less obviously amplified than his Cinderella, and is trimmed to fit more neatly into Bourne's radical reworking of the story.

We begin in 1890 [Aurora's christening], the year the ballet premièred, and fast forward through 1911 [her coming of age] to 2011 [her awakening] and Last Night [her wedding].

Lez Brotherstone's design is gloriously Gothic for the opening, then opens out to an Edwardian Country House lawn – tea and tennis – and a slim forest lit by oil lamps, with a less impressive foray into a decadent nightclub.

The dancing is often inventive, occasionally heart-stoppingly beautiful in its execution.  The entry of the Fairies, complete with candles, uses travelators to give an ethereal effect; the famous Waltz, watched over by a towering statue of a weeping angel, fills the lawn with movement, and the Rose Adagio becomes a romantic pas de deux, with a tragic, toxic black rose lying in wait for the headstrong princess and her gamekeeper lover.

Story-telling and character are Bourne's stock-in-trade, and here we have a barefoot, capricious Aurora, first encountered as a wonderful puppet, recognisable to anyone who's met an energetic, wayward toddler. A Lilac fairy who is a virtuous vampire ensures that the princess's Leo lives long enough to waken her with the traditional kiss. The battle between good and evil extends right through the story, with Carabosse succeeded by her vengeful son, Caradoc. Good triumphs, of course, and the happy-ever-after ending reserves one last surprise blessing before the curtain calls ...

CINDERELLA

Matthew Bourne's ballet

New Adventures at the Theatre Royal, Norwich

26.03.09

Imposing front cloth with London in the Blitz, and a huge close-up of Cinderella's right glass slipper. Vera Lynn on the sound-track; not ousting Prokofiev, surely … No, here's the familiar ballet score, in glorious surround sound, just one of a number of respectful references to the movies.

At the end, after the curtain calls, showers of VE day confetti, and jiving Pennsylvania 6500 for a slow fade back to the slipper and St Paul's.

In between, a ballet which managed to be both innovative and traditional. This is a grey 1940s austerity world, with a dowdy Cinders and her vampish sisters. Even the flowing ball gowns are grey silk. Matthew Bourne's re-interpretation has many brilliant ideas, many of them realised thanks to Lez Brotherston's wonderful designs. The Embankment scene, the sidecar ride to the Ball after a glorious “Can't black out the moon” waltz sequence, the station tea room, with the clock a reminder of the last midnight, the wheel-chair-bound Father staring into the fire, the knees-up to what is usually Ugly Sisters music, and most impressive of all, the direct hit on the Café de Paris.

Although pure balleticism is not what this show is about, their was some fine dancing from a large company: Harry the Pilot [the Prince of this fairytale], who has most of the work to do, was Sam Archer, his Cinderella, looking as glamorous as Grace Kelly, was danced by Kerry Biggin, Madelaine Brennan played a Joan Crawford evil stepmother, and the Angel, our silver-haired Fairy Godfather, a lithely athletic Christopher Marney.