REVIEW: Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands is a shear delight

After ten years, Matthew Bourne has revived his critically acclaimed stage interpretation of Tim Burton’s cinematic masterpiece, Edward Scissorhands, brought to life by his dance theatre company, New Adventures. It recently kicked off its nationwide tour after a successful month-long residence at London Sadlers Wells theatre over Christmas and is currently performing at Liverpool’s Empire theatre.

This unique modern fairy tale of how society reacts to the outsider and how it treats all those who are different has unquestionably become a cult-classic. One day, a clever, but lonely old inventor decides to create a son; and so, using his ingenious skills, Edward is brought to life. However, the old man passes away before he can replace his creation’s frightening scissor appendages with hands and innocent Edward is unwittingly left alone and incomplete. When he finally ventures beyond the grounds of his father’s crumbling mansion, he is taken in by the family of a caring Avon saleswoman and falls in love with her teenage daughter, Kim. Thanks to his strange appearance and the whacky, imaginative hedge sculptures and haircuts he produces, Edward quickly becomes flavour of the month with the town’s residents – but it can’t last, and as the tide turns and opinions change everything begins to fall apart.

Before it finally premiered in 2005, the first dance production of Edward Scissorhands took over seven years to be developed. Bourne believes he would have given up hope of the project ever coming to fruition but for the support of the film’s creators: director and all-round fantastical genius, Tim Burton;  composer, Danny Elfman, whose score for the film has become an iconic fairy tale soundtrack and is retained in the stage adaption; and skilled screenwriter, Caroline Thompson, who also helped co-adapt new stage version. “I was overwhelmed, during this time,” says Bourne, “by the kindness and trust that they each showed me in handing over what I knew was a very personal and beloved project for each of them. […] I only hope […] that we have done justice to the spirit of their unique cinematic version.”

Unafraid, as ever, to stamp his own mark onto renowned and much loved works, Bourne has daringly added a striking new addition to the plot, creating a prologue that reveals to us the tragic reasons why the inventor decides to create Edward in the first place.

In addition, he takes the essence of some of the larger than life inhabitants of Hope Springs that we recognise from the film, developing and transforming them into entire families for a more defined and contrasting patchwork of suburban life that still successfully channels the comedy of the original. For example, Burton’s fanatically religious neighbour becomes a whole god-fearing, judgemental family complete with Goth son, and a garish family of hicks set up their lawn chairs next to the pin-up perfection of the local mayor and mayoress’s offspring. As always with a Bourne creation, the set and costumes, both designed by Lez Brotherstone, are mesermising and perfectly compliment the performance.

Some aspects of the creative changes, however, don’t come without a certain loss. In Burton’s film we see lucky, strong-hearted and unerringly decent character of mother figure Peg Boggs fearlessly visit the ominous mansion that broods over the town, discover the lonely Edward, and usher him into the colourful, 50s-isinpired world he only ever spied from afar. Yet, Bourne’s Peg simply discovers Edward as he wanders the streets in confusion, and although she is kind and loving, the prominence of her role is significantly lessened and there is a sense that she merges a little too completely into the background as a slightly more mundane 50s housewife character.

Of course, to a die-hard fan, in the re-adaption of such a timeless cult-classic there will always be something at which to nit-pick. Yet, the change is a forgivable one when considering the difficulty of translating the heart-breaking emotion of the original work into expressive dance choreography. Nevertheless, Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands is a triumph.

Talented young Dominic North wins the hearts of audience members with his excellent portrayal of Edward (also played by Liam Mow) and overcomes the challenge of handling the scissor blades that are part of his costume effortlessly. All the company’s dancers, without exception, are immensely gifted. Larger scenes featuring the full cast of over twenty are truly a feast for the eyes, with little character quirks played out wherever you look, thanks to the careful attention of Bourne’s devoted choreographic detail.

One particularly memorable and beautiful scene portrays Edward and Kim, as they dance within a magical dream sequence where the topiary figures Edward sculpts whimsically come to life. Another re-enacts the famous scene as Edward sculpts an angel out of ice and Kim dances entranced in the snow-like flakes that fall below, all with gorgeously balletic choreography.

Touring until mid-march, regardless of whether or not you are a fan of Bourne’s work or even of dance, everyone must seize the fleeting opportunity to catch this magical work for the second time before it’s over for good.

As if on cue, as the curtain falls in Liverpool, flurries of snow roll into the city and across the North West - you can’t help but wonder if Edward is behind it all.

For more information about the show and for tour dates, visit Matthew Bourne's New Adventures website here.

Photos by Johan Persson

THEATRE REVIEW: MATTHEW BOURNE'S SLEEPING BEAUTY ~ Liverpool Empire, 4th May

Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty Hears Bumps in the Night

The commencement of award-winning choreographer Matthew Bourne’s latest production in 2012 marked the 25^th anniversary of his acclaimed company, and is touring the UK until mid-May when it will continue with a host of international performances. Sleeping Beauty evokes much of the darkness of Charles Perrault’s original fairy tale whilst turning the plot on its head in a bold new retelling of this timeless story of malice, unconquerable love, and hope.  

            In this reimagined version, the King and Queen, desperate for a child of their own, invoke the aid of Carabosse the Evil Fairy who, offended by the lack of royal gratitude for granting their wish, curses the newborn baby, Princess Aurora, to prick her finger upon a rose and die when she comes of age in her twenty first year. The Good Fairy, Count Lilac, though unable to lift the evil curse, transforms it into one hundred years’ enchanted sleep instead. After his mother’s death, the Evil Fairy’s son Caradoc arrives at the Princess’s birthday celebrations and leads the doomed Aurora to her fate. When her secret true love, Leo (alas no prince, but rather the humble gardener’s boy) unintentionally eludes the Good Fairy’s slumberous enchantment over the castle, he must take drastic action and overcome the mortal implications of the long years that lie before him in order to awaken the sleeping princess, battle against Caradoc and his deadly, amorous intentions, and be reunited with his love once more.

Act one begins in 1890 (the year in which Tchaikovsky’s production was actually first performed), act two springs us forward to 1911, and act three then leaps resoundingly into the modern day when Aurora’s bewitched sleep finally ends. Lez Brotherstone, Liverpool-born designer, has created beautiful sets for all these periods and everything in-between. His designs are at the same time delightfully simplistic and gorgeously lavish: The Victorian interior of the castle is dominated by  a wide window through which the full-moon peers, only to be masked by a gigantic velvet drape that splits the stage in half;  the topiaries and rolling expanse of grass in the castle grounds of 1911 create the illusion of a bright and airy Edwardian summer’s day; A strange land of fog and lantern-covered trees acts as the dreamscape of the enchanted sleepers; the elegant red and black 21^st century night club is the stylish haunt of fairies in the present day.  A cleverly designed set of double conveyor belts towards the back of the stage enables the cast to drift ethereally about all these sets, allowing for some incredible choreography.  

   In terms of music, it must be said that the overall impact of the whole piece is weakened to an extent by the lack of a live orchestra, despite the very admirable use of Tchaikovsky’s score by music producer Terry Davies sound designer Paul Groothuis. The thrilling atmosphere an orchestra can generate as it tunes up moments before curtain is something a sound system will simply never be able to match.

The cast performances, however, are truly unimpeachable. Huge credit must be given to dancer Hannah Vassallo, whose accomplished portrayal of the feisty princess is fantastically animated, in spite of the fact she spends a large portion of the performance’s latter half dancing as though asleep as well as blindfolded.

Dominic North’s acting and dancing skills are excellent, there’s no doubt, but even they can do little to inflate the somewhat regretably lacklustre quality of Bourne’s hero Leo, who tends to remain as two-dimensional as the archetypal figures of Tchaikovsky’s original masterpiece. Indeed, the relationship between the gardener’s boy and Princess Aurora somehow remains disappointingly hollow throughout. Far more convincing is the dark web of emotions belonging to the sinister yet charismatic antagonist Caradoc, whose disdain for Aurora quickly mingles with desire as he dances a seductively menacing pas de deux with her and later caresses her lifeless body in a memorable and skilful dance sequence.

Tom Jackson Greaves, who plays Caradoc, also shines in his alternate role as the Evil Fairy Carabosse, whose brief, regal and menacing presence is keenly felt, not least during the especially haunting moment she conjures up a ghostly vision of the future princess, who dances on stage costumed so as to appear faceless as she eerily prophecies the details of her future curse.

Not without humour, the second half of the performance opens in the year 2011 with a group of true-to-life modern teens vainly posing for pictures outside the briar-ridden gates of the castle, and the beanie-covered head of lovelorn Leo pops out of a tent with his endearingly mini set of wings revealed. Earlier in the performance, masterful puppetry very nearly steals the show as it has the mischievous baby Aurora scrambling about the stage, scaling curtains and sitting up inquisitively in her cot, all whilst interacting perfectly with the cast members.

Bourne’s fairies (three of either sex) are decked in glittering aristocratic finery trimmed with multi-coloured rags to hint at their wild, otherworldliness; each sports an unobtrusive set of delicate wings and a black mask-like strip of shadow across the eyes. Bourne instils these mysterious creatures with a figurative and literal bite: in a vampiric twist, good fairy Count Lilac, played by the talented Christopher Marney, takes heartbroken protagonist Leo (who has accidentally alluded the sleeping charm the fairy earlier placed across the castle) in his arms and sinks his teeth into his neck, granting him immortality and the means to await the awakening of his beloved in one hundred years’ time, reiterating the production’s subtitle: ‘A Gothic Romance’.

Though it is not without faults, Matthew Bourne’s is a strong and visually stunning adaption in which his unique style of choreography flows seamlessly together; his vast imagination takes root and blossoms in order to fill us with child-like wonder, like the storyteller extraordinaire that he is.

For more details on the show, visit:

http://www.new-adventures.net/productions/sleeping_beauty/about

(Photos sourced from the offical New Adventures website)