New Adventures at the Birmingham Hippodrome
February 7, 2017
Phil Preece
Any new work by Matthew Bourne has to be a must-see event not just for devotees of dance but for anyone who loves theatre, and the good news is The Red Shoes does not disappoint. In fact, the main impression left by this monumental production is of richness and ingenious invention at every level. This really is the goods from a creator who knows everything there is to know about staging.
Describing it as the culmination of his twenty-year ambition to bring Powell and Pressburger’s seminal 1948 film to the stage, Sir Matthew admits that this production is his personal love letter to a life in theatre and dance. It really shows. The Red Shoes is on the truly grand scale backed up by an attention to detail in every department that places it in the top level of production values.
Just as the original 1948 film features choreography by and performances from real life early British ballet stars such as Robert Helpmann and Leonid Massine, Matthew Bourne’s Red Shoes also becomes a roman à clef with its portrait of the hothouse atmosphere of the world of early British ballet. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the second half opening scene set in Villefrance-sur-Mer, where the camp crowd who surrounded Frederick Ashton in those days spent summer holidays letting their hair down at the not-yet fashionable and presumably extremely liberal fishing villages of the Cote d’Azur, well away from censorious British eyes.
Photo Johan Persson
Although as its creator says this Red Shoes is a love letter to early British ballet via a series of sumptuous scenes and imaginatively staged set-pieces, you don’t have to have a PhD in dance history to enjoy it. Similarly, while the show is full of period references to period ballets such as Le Train Bleu, you don’t have to get them. Also, lower down the entertainment scale, in the music hall scene where star ballerina Victoria Page (brilliantly danced by Ashley Shaw) finds herself performing after a breakdown, you don’t have to have heard of sand dancers Wilson and Kepple (but no Betty) to get the joke.
Lez Brotherton’s wonderful sets and costumes, Paule Constable’s subtle lighting and the marvellous score by Hollywood composer Bernard Herrmann that is powerfully atmospheric and marvellously danceable all conspire to support this powerful work brilliantly. There’s so much in it I can’t wait to catch up with it again later on during its nationwide tour.
The Red Shoes continues on tour, including a return visit to the Birmingham Hippodrome from July 19-22. For other dates and venues, visit www.new-adventures.net/the-red-shoes.