Matthew Bourne's The Red Shoes at Sadler's Wells Review

Based on the famous 1948 movie by Powell and Pressburger (which was itself a re-fashioning of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale about the shoes which once put on, would not allow the wearer to stop dancing), the stage adaptation leans heavily on a superbly theatrical set and costumes by Lez Brotherston. His pivoting proscenium arch, redolent of Victorian theatres everywhere, tracks up and down stage and slowly spins to reveal both what is in front and behind the curtain, as the members of the Lermontov Ballet Company rehearse and perform a production of The Red Shoes, but not without incident.

Following a rehearsal accident, the prima ballerina Irina Boronskaya (Michela Meazza) is replaced by a dazzlingly talented young redhead Victoria Page (Cordelia Braithwaite), who has caught the attention of company director Boris Lermontov (Andy Monaghan), but not merely for her dancing ability. She in the meantime, has been developing a romantic attachment to the company’s young music composer Julian Craster (Leonardo McCorkindale). We witness the dance company perform their tragic tale extensively to great critical success at houses across Europe, and at the end of the tour, the troupe decant to the South of France and Monte Carlo to enjoy some much needed down time. It is here that Lermontov is no longer able to restrain his jealousy, confounded that Victoria would choose to commit to someone other than him. As tempers flare, the young couple leave the troupe and we next see them at a disheveled East End music hall trying to eke out a living with an act whilst surrounded by ventriloquists, fan dancers and even Wilson Keppel and Betty (although Betty seemed absent) performing their famed sand dance routine. The calamitous downturn in their circumstances puts a huge strain on the young lovers, and eventually Victoria returns to Lermontov to be reunited with her mentor.

Whilst Bourne’s show may not possess quite the flamboyant grandeur of his Swan Lake or the choreographic complexity and polish of The Midnight Bell, THE RED SHOES has a great deal going for it and will undoubtedly delight Sadler’s Wells audiences over the Christmas period and into the new year with its period detail and surrealist blurring of the realms of fantasy and reality.