Bourne’s Glorious Adaptation of the Seminal 1940s Movie
4.5 out of 5.0 starsMatthew Bourne never made a secret of his love for the cinema – it’s not for nothing he named his first dance company Adventures in Motion Pictures, now New Adventures. His every stage work attests to that love by including scenes either inspired by famous, easily identifiable cinematic sequences or direct quotations from favourite movies.
In The Red Shoes, though, Bourne goes further: he adapts Powell and Pressburger’s seminal 1948 film to the stage. Bourne’s The Red Shoes premiered in 2016, went on to win a raft of awards, and is now firmly installed at Sadler’s Wells for the festive season, as part of an extensive UK tour.
Inspired by the eponymous Hans Christian Andersen story, The Red Shoes is essentially about the primacy of art in life. It portrays the love affair between a rising star dancer, Vicky Page, and a struggling composer, Julian Craster, and the clash between their love and the higher calling of art, as represented by the powerful single-minded impresario Boris Lermontov. He, too, loves Vicky, but for her art, which should not be distracted by human love. That Vicky and Julian should insist on getting married leads a furious Lermontov to banish them from his company.
The red shoes are central to the ballet that Lermontov’s company is touring in France – per Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, once put on, they’ll force the wearer to keep on dancing; but their demonic power crosses over from Lermontov’s ballet to real life, when a repentant Vicky returns to Lermontov and puts them on, leading to tragedy.
Bourne’s The Red Shoes is a tight two-hour show in two Acts that never flags, drawing the audience into a breathless ride through two worlds simultaneously, that of Lermontov’s ballet company, with its daily class, rehearsals, little dramas and petulance, and the stylish ballet the dancers are working on.
The visual element is terrific. Sets and costumes by Bourne regular collaborator Lez Brotherston are sumptuous and extremely clever: the central set relies on an elaborate proscenium arch, which rotates to allow views of both performance and backstage; later in Act II, as Vicky and Julian fall into penury, the same arch rotates alternating views of the two of them in a miserable room, and Lermontov in his richly apparelled home, frenzied at the loss of Vicky.
As the company tours, Brotherston’s sets contrast the closed atmosphere of the ballet studio and stage with the wide open views of the sunny south of France, and the dancers’ jolly breaks away from their day job.
The ballet within the ballet, the company’s performance of The Red Shoes, is set in its own world, mostly monochrome and touching on expressionist. The first note of colour comes with the red shoes proferred to the young dancer by the devil; as she puts them on, her costume, too, acquires a red top over a flimsy white tule skirt. A grey clock face rotates endlessly on the backcloth, projections of calendar pages fly across the set and her skirt becomes bedraggled as the power of the red shoes makes her dance month after month until she dies..
Paule Constable’s magisterial lighting lends just the right atmosphere to every scene.
Bourne’s characterisation of an early ballet company is a delight of detail and gentle parody and is beautifully served by his stupendous dancers: there’s the ageing diva, danced with tremendous expression by Bourne veteran Michela Meazza. The scene where she tests optimum stage angles by carrying a sylphide costume and moving from spotlight to spotlight is glorious; an exacting and often exasperated Glenn Graham is a credible, and very funny, ballet master; some male dancers come to rehearsal with a cigarette between their lips even as they practice their jumps.
But, of course, this is primarily a work about three main characters, and on press night all three dancers shone. Cordelia Braithwaite was entirely convincing as a star in the making, ambitious yet vulnerable, her audition performance for a seemingly uninterested Lermontov showing pure lines and an airy lightness.
Leonardo McCorkindale portrayed Julian Craster as the energetic composer, his thrill at making music leading him to jump excitedly around the piano, and a loving partner to Braithwaite’s Vicky. Their duets are intense, both in early tender love and in the disillusionment of later days. Lermontov’s characterisation is a little one note, but he was given a strong stage presence by Andy Monaghan.
For his music, Bourne drew from the cinematic scores of the prolific Bernard Herrmann, composer of, among others, the haunting score for Fahrenheit 451. Orchestrated by Terry Davies and played live by the New Adventures Orchestra, under Benjamin Pope’s baton, it was central to the cinematic scope of Bourne’s The Red Shoes.
Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes is at Sadler’s Wells from 2/12 to 18/01 2026
Sadler’s Wells (Angel)
Rosebery Avenue
London, EC1R 4TN
Looking for something different? We recommend KENREX, currently showing at the Other Palace Theatre
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