Last night Stu and I went to see Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands at the Sadler's Wells in downtown Islington.
The story tells of a man named Edward, an unfinished creation, who has scissors for hands. Edward is taken in by a suburban family and falls in love with their teenage daughter.
We'd seen Bourne's The Car Man, Swan Lake and most recently Dorian Gray and were mightily impressed so our expectations were pretty high.
Sadly things weren't quite as good as we'd hoped. It told the story well enough. And what a sweet story it is? Sure, it looked good, especially the set design. And 'lovely lighting' as Andy would say. But there just wasn't enough dancing in it. A fundamental requirement of a dance production I'd say.
Now this was partly due to the fact that Bourne's production stuck so doggedly to the Edward Scissorhands film plot (fair enough). But having a lead whose hands are quite literally scissors inevitably means you can't really hold hands (or indeed even use your hands to do lifts) in any of the romantic dancing duo sequences. At one point, out of frustration I imagine, Bourne actually sidesteps this issue completely and has a dream sequence where Edward doesn't have scissor hands at all but has real hands so he can present us with a more creative dance (with proper lifts).
Having said all that, we did enjoy it. The cast were full of energy and the performances were at times both touching and comic.
The best part of the production? The dancing topiary in the afore mentioned dream sequence.
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