Show: Sleeping Beauty – A Gothic Romance
Society: New Victoria Theatre (professional productions)
Venue: New Victoria Theatre. The Ambassadors, The Peacocks Centre, Woking, Surrey GU21 6GQ
Credits: Re-imagined and produced by Matthew Bourne and New Adventures. Music by Tchaikovsky
Type: Sardines
Author: Paul Johnson
Performance Date: 14/02/2023
Sleeping Beauty – A Gothic Romance
Paul Johnson | 15 Feb 2023 13:13pm
Image: Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty featuring New Adventures Dancers, Paris Fitzpatrick and Ashley Shaw. Photo: Johan Persson
Matthew Bourne is a genius! Anybody who devises how to successfully bring a niche dance genre like ballet to the masses and sellout venues in record-breaking format (as Sleeping Beauty did for its London run at Sadler’s Wells) ten years down the line deserves such plaudits in my book. Sleeping Beauty – re-imagined, directed and choreographed by Mr Bourne – not only gives Woking’s audiences a change from the usual fare that touring companies tend to offer, but the packed auditorium was noticeably buzzing afterwards at last night’s press night at the town’s New Victoria Theatre. And, in case you’re thinking it, this is not a case of The Emporer’s New Clothes; I can tell the difference between feux praise and the real deal …and this is as real as it gets!
Now before I carry on I have to tell you that my programme was pinched from right under my nose last night so I’ll not be naming the performers for fear of getting it wrong. Needless to say they were top drawer and deserve great praise. Lez Brotherston is, I hope, New Adventures’ costume and set designer for Sleeping Beauty. This is one of the most striking pieces of visual effect of the production – apart from the dancers of course. The show is billed as ‘a Gothic romance’ and you can instantly see why. Theatre audiences in Woking are more used to Sleeping Beauty being a pantomime rather that the dark tale that Mr Bourne has offered this week. Brotherston’s draped curtains are an immediate remender of what is to come.
Bourne’s reimagining includes a puppet as the baby princess, and is brillianlty opporated. Carrabosse has delivered her to the distraught King and Queen who, as a couple, have found conceiving a challange. However after the King forgot to fully show his gratitude to the fairy supplier she puts a curse on the baby. Following Carrabosse’s death in prison it is diwn to her son – Carradoc – to seek vengance. It is not a traditional spinning wheel on which twenty-one-year-old Princess Aurora pricks her finger, it is the smell of a black rose which induces the one-hundred-year living death. Oh, did I also mention the vampires?
So that Aurora is kept company, the love of her life, Leo, is made a fairy when Carradoc drinks his blood. The rest, you will need to work out for yourselves but, rest assured, it is more fitting with the story you know. I will just say that, post interval, it was marked how one hundred years later (in 1990) modern teenagers are still annoying as they flock to the legendary castle gates to take selfies etc. One of them even pricks their own finger on the ring of brambles that now surrounds the fortress.
Set, costumes and ballet are all gloriously presented and all in fint of thr most sublime musical backdrop imagineable, Tchaikovsky’s score to Sleeping Beauty. You will all know the main theme already – it’s in the show – but the other pieces are also sublime. It was amusing on press night when some people clapped when tradition has told them to wait. But then again it was well-deserved on every occasion.