I’m back in the country and back in the theatre this weekend, and this time it’s the new Matthew Bourne show, which was in my town this week. This is great to start with, because my local theatre didn’t use to be on the touring list for him, but now it is which is a good sign. The theatre was very full on Tuesday night and stayed pretty full for the q&a with Matthew Bourne himself afterwards.
So The Midnight Bell is a series of interconnected stories, all playing out at basically the same time in and around a pub in Soho in the 1930s. It’s inspired by the novels of Patrick Hamilton, which I will admit I haven’t read but during the Q&A (and in the programme) Matthew Bourne explained that he has mixed characters from different novels together, added his own and made it all a bit less bleak than the novels are. And it’s definitely darker than some of Bourne’s other works that I’ve seen (currently standing at six of his New Adventures shows plus the latest production of Oliver! which he choreographed) and perhaps less hopeful. But it is brilliantly atmospheric – dark and seedy with beautiful dancing and acting.
I think this is the best cast of dancers that I have seen for a New Adventures show – it’s got lots of their longtime company members all doing brilliant work. There are two people for each role, so there are lots of variations on who you could see, but almost all the names were familiar to me and I was excited to see Dominic North again, as well as Liam Mower. As I said at the top, the theatre was very full on Tuesday night, although I was disappointed to hear some people grousing at the interval about the fact that there was a gay storyline and a couple of couples left. But they missed out because the second half – set a month after the first act – has even more beautiful dancing and clever and interesting resolutions to the various storylines. I liked the device of having characters miming to old songs as well – it added to what you understand of the characters and their motivations and is something different that I haven’t seen Bourne do before – in the Q&A he said he liked it because it is “on the edge of not working, which makes it exciting” and I would agree with that.
This is on tour through until the autumn – check out the New Adventures website for dates and locations, and most of them also have a Q&A night too.
Have a great Sunday.
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I missed this when it came to Curve a few weeks ago and it sounds a real shame after reading this. Glad that you enjoyed it so much.
If he’s usually dark-but-gothic, this is dark-but-seedy. It’s so good though. THere’s so much happening at once that I could go again and see loads of new things I’m sure.