When Powell and Pressburger’s beloved film The Red Shoes appeared in 1948, it insisted on finding meaning in the disillusioned aftermath of the second world war. Matthew Bourne’s enthralling new stage version sweeps into our own age of austerity and despair. Its heroine commits to the art that sustains her, even as it devours her.
Vicky Page, an aspirant ballerina, hopes to impress an impresario – Boris Lermontov, the Diaghilev-alike director of an itinerant, innovative ballet company. Lermontov’s talent is talent-spotting. He’s a master watcher, and in the press night cast, Sam Archer plays him as superbly poker-faced. He would rather pick lint off his suit than watch a galumphing wannabe – but Vicky nonetheless snags his attention. He invites her, along with Julian Craster, a crosspatch young composer, to join the company. Under Lermontov’s eye, the two eager artists realise their gifts – until their romance threatens his creative plans.
Everyone here is consumed by their work. Lez Brotherston designs a mobile proscenium arch that swivels abruptly between front and backstage, swoops the dancers around and devours the space – while Paule Constable’s lighting switches from grand to grotty as Vicky leaves the glamorous Riviera for a tatty East End music hall. Music culled from Hollywood composer Bernard Herrmann’s early scores (Citizen Kane; The Ghost and Mrs Muir) is a revelation. Sensitively orchestrated by Terry Davies, it’s plushly romantic, but with razors tucked into the velvet melodies.
When Lermontov moves towards Vicky, it’s a kind of seduction – the puppet master cherishing his marionette. Ashley Shaw plays up Vicky’s ambition and creamy assurance. Passing her audition, she gives a tiny smile of glee; when the star ballerina is injured, she’s already watching for her chance; when Lermontov offers her the lead in his new ballet, he carries her into a spotlight where she looks perfectly at home.
Bourne makes juicy movement the index of creative passion. Only Lermontov, without whom no one moves, retains his ramrod stillness. Even a private solo is half-hearted, half-bodied: when he tangos at a giddy company party, it’s greeted as a huge event. In contrast, inspiration sets Julian (Dominic North) rolling his keyboard around, possessing the stage as his imagination hums. The Red Shoes ballet that makes Vicky a star also captures her heedless need to dance: she’s as driven as Herrmann’s relentless, galloping score from Fahrenheit 451.
That ballet, closing the show’s first act, seals Lermontov’s cutting-edge credentials: futuristic, monochrome, with incisive expressionist movement. It’s no fairy tale: Vicky’s heroine receives her scarlet pointe shoes from a Lermontov-style seducer, and retains them even as they nudge her off balance, wear her down. In time, the ballet will become Vicky’s own vivid living nightmare.
Like the set, the show moves with a zip. It could use some breathing space to nail key plot turns. An ensemble rippling with personality includes Michela Meazza and Liam Mower as the fictional company’s languid stars – not so much rehearsing as walking a costume through its paces. There’s a daily class with ciggies wedged into mouths, and ballet pastiches involving gamey melodrama, beachside antics and vehement allegory.
Already richly satisfying, The Red Shoes will surely gain in detail and resonance. Bourne can’t replicate the film’s most celebrated exchange – when Lermontov asks “Why do you want to dance?” and Vicky shoots back, “Why do you want to live?” But you feel that need humming through the dancers’ veins.
- At Sadler’s Wells, London, until 29 January 2017. Box office: 020-7863 8000. Then touring.
