Passion, humour and tragedy as Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes dances into Wales Millennium Centre – review

Thank you to Wales Millennium Centre for providing review tickets for The Red Shoes

The Red Shoes is at Wales Millennium Centre this week, bringing Matthew Bourne’s creative genius to the Welsh capital once again.

This time, the much-lauded choreographer behind such works as the all-male Swan Lake and the gothic fantasy of Edward Scissorhands, turns his hand to adapting legendary film-making duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 Oscar-winning film of the same name, with his combination of classical ballet and contemporary theatrical storytelling.

Performed by Bourne’s highly-acclaimed New Adventures dance company, The Red Shoes is an exquisite production with passion, humour and, ultimately, tragedy as a young ballerina is torn between her art and her heart, forced to choose between her new romance or the need to perform. It’s easy to see why The Red Shoes won two Olivier Awards as well as LA Critics Awards for choreography, and set and costume design and remains an audience favourite 10 years after it premiered in 2016.

Victoria Page is the rising star who lands the lead role in a production of The Red Shoes ballet, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. However, she finds herself torn between her love for struggling composer Julian Craster and impressing ballet impresario, Boris Lermentov, whose jealousy and obsession pushes the pair to breaking point. 

Hannah Kremer is utterly captivating as Victoria, gracefully gliding across the stage on pointes one moment, her body conveying conflict and emotion as she’s pulled in different directions by Reece Causton as Boris and Leonardo McCorkindale as Julian the next. Her final dramatic scenes where the reality of life and the fiction of performance begin to merge are breathtaking. It’s a reminder of how much can be portrayed purely through movement.

Lez Brotherston’s set design ranges from the opulent theatre, cleverly moving to show both the decadent stage and what’s going on behind the scenes, to the less glamorous rehearsal rooms to bright beach scenes, to the monochrome staging of the show within a show. The score is adapted from Bernard Herrmann’s film original, with some wonderful added sound theatrics amplifying the performance.

The pacing is so perfectly considered as we move from sensuous duets to the dance troupe filling the stage with colour and movement. There’s romance, artistic temperament, jealous rages, and plenty of humour before the show’s dramatic ending. 

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen a ballet before, or if you’re unfamiliar with the film of The Red Shoes – but you might like to consider reading the synopsis of the show beforehand, to have an idea of the plot (there’s a brilliantly detailed one on the New Adventures website, although it does contain spoilers). There are moments where members of the audience less familiar with the plot are left confused, and it has a wonderful effect, pre-shadowing Victoria as she begins to lose control of what is real and what is art, as we too are left questioning.

The Red Shoes is at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff until Saturday 7 March with performances daily at 7.30pm plus 2.30pm matinees on Thursday and Saturday 

Tickets are priced from £18 with good availability for all shows. Age guidance is 8+ with no admittance to under 2s. The performance is approximately two hours including interval. Book online at wmc.org.uk

Also coming up at Wales Millennium Centre:

Mean Girls, 10-14 March (very limited availability)

Barnum, 17-21 March

Priscilla: Queen of the Dessert 20-25 April

The Spy Who Came in From The Cold, 28 April-2 May

Bluey’s Big Play, 7-10 May