Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at Sadler's Wells (25 Jan 25)

Sadler's Wells has the admirable habit of running a Matthew Bourne ballet over the Christmas period and in to the New Year and my equally admiral habit is to go on, or near, my birthday. This year it was a slightly refreshed Swan Lake and that is as close to unmissable as you can get. I have seen it many times for very good reasons.

Frankly, £45 for Seat 4 in Row A of the Second Circle was something of a steal.

The pre-theatre meal in Banana Tree, a regular venue for me, was a near disaster despite booking a table beforehand. For reasons never explained, we had to wait almost half an hour for a table. At least they were reasonably apologetic about it, priorities our order and gave us a discount. The food was good too.

That little annoyance over, I settled into my seat ready to be swept away by the music and movement.

I think I spotted a couple of very minor changes in this production (there may well have been many more that I missed) but it was very much the show that I knew and loved and I loved it again.

I have nothing to add to what I have said about Swan Lake before, it is just a sumptuous mix of music and movement that captivated me for a couple of hours.

I thought that it had only been a few months since I saw Swan Lake at the cinema but, apparently, it was almost a year and a half ago. Here's hoping that the next wait to see it is not to long either.

Edward Scissorhards at Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Sadler's Wells has the charming habit of putting a Matthew Bourne show on over Christmas and I have the equally charming habit of going to them all. Often this has been on my birthday but this year the run did not extend to the end of January so I went for an early December date instead.

This year the show was Edward Scissorhards which I was really looking forward to not having seen it since 2009! Booking and seat selection were easy and I got Second Circle Row A Seat 28 for just £45.

Banana Tree is my pre-Sadler's Wells eatery of choice and it is for many people so I booked a table for 6pm to be safe. That proved to be a wise decision.

Eating at 6 also meant plenty of time to grab a beer at the theatre before the show. These rituals matter.

My memories of Edward Scissorhards were slight, having seen it only once and that all but fifteen years ago so I settled down to enjoy the show afresh, and enjoy it I did.

It had all the characteristics of a Matthew Bourne ballet with heaps of skilful choreography, especially when the stage is full of dancers, where the patterns of movement the ensemble make are much more than the sum of the individual parts.

A nice aspect of this show is that it has two moods with light domestic scenes and dark gothic ones, with music and dancing to match.

The story was good too. It closely followed the original film whereas most Bourne ballets, e.g. Swan Lake, deliberately chose new paths to take. It was captivating and emotional throughout, helped significantly by the portrayal of Edward. 

It is hard to compare these things but on this showing Edward Scissorhards is my second favourite Matthew Bourne show after the iconic, and original, Swan Lake. I just hope that I do not have to wait another fifteen years before it comes back again.

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at Olympic Cinema

I have seen Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake several times, usually at Sadlers Wells, and when a chance Tweet alerted me to it being shown at cinemas I rushed to find a local showing.

Screenings had already started and so my choices were very limited but there was a morning slot at Olympic Cinema in Barnes. I had walked past the building several times and had admired the 1900's architectural style of it so welcomed this chance to go inside.

In less time than it has taken to write this I had booked my ticket for £10.

Getting there was fairly straightforward, two buses, a 65 and a 33, took me more-or-less door to door and in enough time to get a coffee from the cafe in the same building.

It turned out that, somehow that completely escapes me, I had booked for a Babes In Arms screening and the only other people in the cinema where a family with a toddler and a mother with a baby. There was quite a bit of gurgling, whispering and paper rustling but I have had children and am used to ignoring their distracting behaviour.

Besides, this was Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake and it would have taken something quite gruesome to spoil that.

Of course Swan Lake starts with the advantage of Tchaikovsky's sumptuous music and I was silently humming along to all the familiar tunes.

Swan Lake made Matthew Bourne's reputation and it is easy to see why. The choreography is busy with so much going on even in the quieter scenes. I spent a lot of time admiring the details of hand and head movements. This is unapologetic contemporary dance with intricate shapes and unusual movements, so unlike the traditional ballet with its jumps and spins.

And because there is just so much details dancing going on all the time a lot of it had been forgotten and could be enjoyed again as if new.

The story is better too with the fill-in dances in the original ballet being incorporated into the story. This is particularly true with the succession of national dances in the ball scene in Act 3.

It is hard to overstate just how much I enjoyed Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake even on film in a cinema shared with children.

After the film there was only one sensible thing to do and that was to have lunch in the Olympic Restaurant. That was a little more pricey than I am used to, but their menu outside had warned me of that and it was well in the price range of a deserved treat.

I think I will be going back to Olympic Cinema and I will most definitely be seeing Swan Lake again the next time I get the opportunity to do so.

Sumptuous Sleeping Beauty at Sadler's Wells

A recent Christmas tradition, and one that I heartily approve of, is to go and see a Matthew Bourne ballet and this usually mean a trip to Sadler's Wells. Of course there are other occasions and other theatres where his style of dance can be appreciated and I get to as many of those as I can, even when it means going to Wimbledon to do so.

I had been to see Sleeping Beauty almost three years previously and rereading that write-up now it almost reads as if I was damning it with faint praise so I was a little cautious when going to see it again. Being cautious did not extent to missing the show or even going for cheaper seats and so I went for my usual place, the Second Circle, and my usual front-row seat, this time it was A17 and it cost me £32. I had been there or thereabouts before and I like it there.

Sadler's Wells goes for the heavy safety curtain so there is nothing very much to photograph but I took a "my view" shot anyway. The safety rail looks prominent but it was not, I had the camera low to avoid attention and, even so, the bar was still below the stage.

Having seen Sleeping Beauty just the once, and then a few years previously, there was much about the performance that I had forgotten and so could appreciate for the first time again.

What was familiar to me was the Tchaikovsky music and the general flavour of the choreography, and I liked both so I knew that I was in for a treat.

Watching Sleeping Beauty again enabled me to appreciate from of the bigger things that I had missed the first time when trying to catch all the detail. The story was very well told. I like the way that Matthew Bourne tells stories with his dances whereas classic ballet often uses a simple story to stage set dances. The dancing, like the story, was split in two halves, before and after the long sleep. Before the sleep the style was Edwardian tea dance, though with Bourne's unusual movements, and after the sleep the dance was modern. The Sleeping Beauty spent a surprising amount of the time in the air being lifted, carried, thrown and (thankfully) caught.

I appreciated the little stuff again too. Bourne's choreography makes great use of arms, heads and legs to make angular shapes that if somebody on the tube made would make you laugh but here the shapes were joined by the movement to transition between them and the music to set the pace and the mood. The combined package was a thing of beauty. Humour played a part too, as it always does with Bourne.

All the little touches in the story, movement, set and costumes added to the richness of the experience and it is that richness that endears me to Bourne so much.

A lively The Car Man thrills at Wimbledon Theatre

Every time I write about dance I say that I should see more of it but, Sadler's Wells apart (and that is not very close) chances are few and far between so I make an effort to get to the ones that I can. This time that effort was forking out £36 for a seat (E23) in the fifth row of the Dress Circle.

It was an easy decision to break my own rules on pricing and seating to see The Car Man again, a show I had only seen once before way back in 2007. Not only had I enjoyed it then but it was by Matthew Bourne and I have loved everything of his that I have seen.

I try to plan my work around my theatre and had booked for a Friday so that I could work at home and then catch a couple of buses into Wimbledon for the evening show, pausing at Mai Thai on the way for something tasty to eat. I like to have a designated restaurant for each theatre that I go to regularly and Mai Thai fits the bill nicely.

In a break from what was tradition I did not go to the pub across the road or to the theatre bar before the show. I was not overly cutting down on my drinking but I was easing one or two out of the schedule just to help.

The view was much better than I expected with my fear of taller people sitting in front of me and I had a good view of the stage with no interruptions.

It had been a long time since I had last seen The Car Man so I sat down ready to be surprised and delighted all over again.

It was described as a reimagining of Carmen, rather than a retelling, and the story was very different. There was a cameo of the original in one scene with some Flamenco dancers in a bar reenacted part of her tragic story.

In The Car Man, Matthew Bourne played to all his strengths with lots of vibrant dancing, mostly in groups and with lots of things going on at the same time all across the stage. It was boisterous, energetic, flamboyant, sexy and huge fun. It may have been inspired by Carmen but there the mood is almost unremittingly gloomy (as the ending is long predicted) whereas here it was mostly jolly, despite some of the dark things that happened.

The poster at the top says it all really and, for once, was a true reflection of what the show was like. This is how I would dance if I could dance, but as I cannot dance like that I'll happily settle for watching other people do so instead.

This was, of course, a dance with a story to tell and there was plenty of acting as well as dancing, as always with Matthew Bourne. And, as with the dancing, this was not confined to the lead roles. This was an ensemble performance and a very good one too.

It was also good to see The Car Man playing to a packed house and showing that dance can be as popular and as entertaining as the familiar musicals that often show up at theatres like Wimbledon.

The only regret from the evening was realising that I had no more dance in my  diary to look forward too. Sadly, that is a recurring problem.

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at Sadler's Wells

I have seen Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake a few times, including a previous performance at Sadler's Wells, and there is always room to see it again.

This time I deliberately caught the very last performance of the series as it was almost perfectly timed for my birthday on the following day.

Knowing Sadler's Wells reasonably well I was happy to go for the cheap seats (£32) in the front row of the Second Circle (A5). I was perfectly happy with that as I had a good view of the full stage and no heads to look over.

The last time that I saw Swan Lake, at Wimbledon, was with recorded music so it was nice to have a proper orchestra this time. There were not that many of them, and the pit looked quite empty, but they made plenty of noise. Another advantage of being up high was being able to see them.

Swan Lake was magical from the well-known opening bar. The long success of the ballet is largely due to Tchaikovsky's music.

Matthew Bourne's version of the story has become familiar too and so there were no surprises there.

The richness and the variety of the movement is what had brought me back for another dose. There is so much going on all the time so there is lots of dancing that I had either missed previously or had forgotten.

Of course there was much that I remembered, and loved, too. Things like the frantic dancing in the Swank nightclub and the perky little dance with the four cygnets.

Bourne's choreography is all about arms. They swoop and sway around the head and torso, pulling the upper body in to dramatic shapes with them as they do so. It's quite different from the traditional leaping or the contemporary tumbling and that adds to its interest. The dancing also looks deceptively simple, because it lacks the physical pyrotechnics, and if I had the slightest dancing ability I would like to learn one of their pieces and use it next time I get invited to a ball (not that I ever get invited to balls).

The other feature of the choreography is the ensemble work with so much going on all the time. Again this is a big change from the traditional ballets that I grew up with where only the soloists moved so as not to distract you from them.

Swan Lake was as beautiful and dramatic as I remembered and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Familiarity most definitely does not breed contempt in this case and I'll be going to see it again sometime.

Sleeping Beauty at Sadler's Wells

Seeing every Matthew Bourne ballet that I can is one of the better habits that I have developed. This often takes me to Sadler's Wells and often over the Christmas holiday season.

The seasonal offering this year was a new ballet, Sleeping Beauty.

As with most other Bourne ballets (Edward Scissorhands is an exception) the story is changed completely from the familiar one that everybody knows. And that is a good thing as the original stories tend to be too slight to carry an evening of drama.

Not that the story matters that much. There needs to be one to string the scenes together but you attention is on the dance not the narrative.

In Sleeping Beauty Bourne takes a simpler approach to the performance and compared to some of his other works there is much less going on, there are generally fewer people on the stage and they tend to all be doing much the same sort of thing rather than dancing in competition with each other. This is a ballet that little girls can readily enjoy.

Grown men can enjoy it too as the simplified Bourne is still Bourne and the  music by Tchaikovsky bounces along in raucous splendour.

The Gothic style is redolent of Edward Scissorhands, and that is not a bad thing as I love Gothic. The style is expressed in the staging and costumes while the story at the heart remains a fairy story (with some bad fairies).

This was a well constructed and carefully considered performance, and you would expect no less from Bourne. However, the simple story and the simplified choreography made for a less satisfying show than he normally delivers. It is competent and charming but not a classic.

Early Adventures at Richmond Theatre

I love Matthew Bourne's work and have seen several of his performances in recent years (Sleeping Beauty is already booked for 2013).

Most of these have involved a trek to Sadler's Wells in North London (a very small price to pay) so a show closer to home was very welcome.

The occasion was the tour of Early Adventures which, as its name suggests, is a series of pieces choreographed before he became famous with his take on Swan Lake.

This is the sort of event that demands front-row seats in the circle to get the best view and to avoid any chance of getting a tall and/or annoying person in front.

It also demanded an early exit from the office in Cardiff to be sure of getting back to Richmond for the 7;30pm kick-off. That part worked well and I even had time for a pint of Otter in The Duke beforehand.


The first piece verged on gay porn, but in a good way.

Four men in what looked like their underwear tried to out do each other with their flamboyance.

The Matthew Bourne style was immediate obvious, though I suppose it is possible that some of this has been added for the new show.

Firstly it was fun. A lot of this came from the interplay between the characters which included acting as well as dancing. Typical of this was the dismissive looks they gave each other after each solo dance.

Also there were the exaggerated shapes that are so alien to traditional ballet but which seem so obvious now. Arms play a key part in this as they wrap around heads and stretch out at odd angles.

What was different was the amount of dancing that they did on the floor. This was common to all three pieces but is almost missing from the recent shows (that's my way of saying that I do not remember any at all but I do not want to say that there is none just in case that there is and I've forgotten it).

The other pieces were similar in dance style and used more of the cast, just five men and three women, to build on the themes.

Another Bourne trick was played here with the dancers all doing different things so that it is not obvious who you are meant to be following.

This was particularly obvious in Country when a folk dance that is meant to be about symmetry becomes a glorious chaos instead, but a chaos with a pattern and a design.

These are billed as early works, and chronologically that is true, but it is more appropriate to think of them as the string quartets that sit alongside the more famous and more approachable symphonies.

The restricted form is more difficult to compose and can be more difficult to appreciate but the rewards are greater when they work. And these work. Early Adventures is joyous, exuberant and charming.

Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker on tour

The three nice things about Wimbledon Theatre are it's a classic Victorian theatre that has been sympathetically updated, it is easy for me to get to by bus and, for reasons that escape me, it is considered to be out of London and so it attracts many good shows during their provincial tours after a successful spell in Central London.

That is why I found myself there to see Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker after its run at Sadler's Wells.

I missed the show then as I always felt that Nutcracker is a weak ballet with even less plot than usual and somewhat flimsy music. There are some nice tunes and some nice set pieces with nothing to string it together.

But if anybody can refresh a stale ballet it is Matthew Bourne.

The story opens in an orphanage where all the children are working hard cleaning and scrubbing before going to bed.

This takes you straight in to one of Matthew Bourne's strengths, ensemble dancing with the so stage full of action it is hard to know what to watch or who to follow. The scene is grim but the dancing is exuberant.

We then meet the orphanages owners and their two spoilt children. They bring simple decorations and a simpler tree in preparation for Christmas.

The real purpose of this is soon revealed when the orphanage's governors pay a visit and they distribute some equally simple present to the children.

In this version Clara's present is an ordinary doll, not a soldier. I'm not even sure that it is still a nutcracker, not that this is material to either version of the story.

Things then continue in the familiar vein with the doll getting broken, the toys being locked away for safe-keeping and Clara having a dream that features her doll come alive and the magical kingdom of Sweetieland.

There Bourne's production is a marked improvement on the original giving some narrative shape to a series of themed dances.

Here Clara is trying to gain entrance to a party but has no invitation. As she waits outside a series of genuine guests arrive and give us a display of their dancing skills before skipping inside. The burly doorman stops Clara from following each time.

Bourne gives these small groups of dancers exotic things to do but keeps well away from the weird. This is modern dance that is rooted in traditional dance.

Clara finally finds a way in where she finds all the other guests arrayed on a very pink layered cake that is leaning slightly as a cute angle.

Now the groups of dancers can interact again and we get more exhilarating ensemble dancing before the dream ends and we return to the orphanage.

There the doll is discovered to be still alive (he's a Prince, of course) and he and Clara escape from the orphanage as the curtain falls.

Matthew Bourne makes the most of Tchaikovsky's music throughout giving us bombast and grace as required while be continually innovative and thrilling. I must have looked like some sort of idiot because I was grinning with delight all the way through.

You could argue that Nutcracker is Matthew Bourne by the numbers but when the numbers are that good there is no reason to change a winning formula. This is not his best ballet, that's Swan Lake or maybe Edward Scissorhands, but it is still a far better ballet than most and is comfortably the best Nutcracker that I've seen.

Matthew Bourne's Cinderella at Sadler's Wells

Cinderella is a favourite show at this time of the year but it's not usually told like this.

Sadler's Wells' Christmas show this year is Matthew Bourne's version of Cinderella so you know that it is going to be innovative and exciting. You can also guess that it's a show that is going to tempt me to Darkest North London.

And getting there proved to be bit of a challenge. I allowed two hours for a journey that should have taken little more than one but got there with literally just a few seconds to spare.

First the bus was held up in Richmond due to some incident that the Police had to deal with, then all the trains to London were severally delayed to an accident at the level crossing at Barnes, and, finally, I got a taxi for the last leg because waiting for a bus was not working only to find the odd route the taxi took put me behind the bus that I was waiting for!

Ignoring the hassle of getting there, I like Sadler's Wells.

The reception area opens up quickly in to an inviting and comfortable space where you can move and mix easily and also treat yourself to something nice like a glass of champagne or an ice cream.

I got there too late to have any treats beforehand but there were two intervals so I was able to have both the champagne and the ice cream!

The auditorium is nicely modern, which means and attractive and functional space with seats that you can sit in for two hours and can see the stage from. Other theatres take note.

Matthew Bourne's Cinderella retains the essence of the familiar story but is transplanted from a mythical fairy realm to a gritty London during The Blitz.

Other changes include some brothers for the ugly sisters and a complete absence of mice and pumpkins. The shoe remains. But this is a dance and so, like opera, the story plays a minor part in proceedings.

Cinderella (the dance, not the dancer) swirls around the stage with an exuberance of motion, lifting and sweeping limbs. Ensemble work is a real strength of Bourne's choreography and Cinderella shows why. Here the additional brothers and sisters help to fill the stage from the very start.

With Cinders playing a minor role initially, it is left to her exotically lush step-mother to shine above the crowd with humour as well as grace. She's probably meant to be evil but she looks too sexy to be bad. Cruella de Ville is misunderstood too.

There's a lot going on in the story and if I'd bought a programme or could find a synopsis on-line then I would tell you more about it but I did say that the plot does not matter that much and that is true.

What does matter is the dancing, the music and the staging all of which meld together to make a seamless whole that delights and stirs the senses. Like the champagne and the ice cream, the show is a real treat.

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at Wimbledon Theatre

When I saw Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at Sadler's Wells at the end of last year I ended my review by saying that I was looking forward to seeing it again. Now I have.

Then I thought that it would be at Sadler's Wells again but Swan Lake is spreading its wings and is touring to places like New York, Milan and Wimbledon. The later is easily reachable by bus, a 65 or 371 and a 57 take me door-to-door. so that's where I went. Milan looks tempting though...

It was a late decision to go (only because I found out about it late) so the best seat left was some way back but it was dead centre so that was OK. The theatre itself was deeply unimpressive being almost a carbon copy of Richmond which I hate equally because of the way that they have preserved the uncomfortable seats, poor sight-lines and dead acoustics. Give me a modern theatre like Sadler's Wells, Glyndebourne or the Linbury every time.

But it's the show that matters and Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake is one hell of a show.

The music helps, of course, and the familiar opening bars grab your full attention and immediately the theatre is (almost) forgotten and you are swept in to the story. The music plays an important role throughout and despite all that is going on the stage all the time the music seems to stand out more in this production than in the more traditional ones.

The richness of action on the stage is a Matthew Bourne trademark and one of the reasons why it is so rewarding to watch the the show again. An example that comes to mind is the scene in the night club (Swank!) where the patrons dance in pairs and it is frustratingly difficult to decide who to watch.

The choreography is sumptuous, vibrant and dramatic. The shapes the bodies make individually and collectively are exaggerated without being forced. You can get a good idea of this from the Swan Lake Tour photos on Flickr.

It's hard to heap any more superlatives on the performance than I have already done so I'll just say that the previous time I saw this I wanted to see it again soon and this time I was seriously tempted to try and get tickets for the evening show. It really is that good. It's one of the very very best shows of any kind that I have ever seen. I will be seeing again just as soon as I can and I recommend that you do too.

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at Sadler's Wells (December 2009)

Matthew Bourne first burst onto the dance scene in 1995 with his radical version of Swan Lake at Sadler's Wells that featured male swans. Since then I've seen several of his ballets but I had not seen Swan Lake until the current run back at Sadler's Wells.

Almost as hard to believe is the last time that I saw any version of Swan Lake was in Prague in 1991. At that time I had probably seen it 3 or 4 times in the previous two years because I used to be a season ticket holder for the English National Ballet and the Royal Ballet.

Therefore it is clear that this was a show that I really had to go to.

Matthew Bourne's interpretation of the most famous ballet is both radical and at the same time traditional.

The swans are male, so you get two men dancing the pas de deux that define the ballet, and the choreography is very modern with exaggerated gestures that can look clumsy to traditionalists. Not everybody loves modern dance, but I do.

The music is the very familiar and dramatic cascade of Tchaikovsky melodies and the main theme of the ballet (boy meets swan, boy meets second swan, boy goes back to first swan, they both die) is the same. There is nothing in this interpretation of the story for the traditionalists to get upset about.

I think that it is the modern interpretation of a classic story that makes it a success. Swan Lake is always worth watching but when it is with the original choreography then some of it is a little over familiar and there are no surprises; it's rather like eating McVities Digestives. The new version demands continuous attention and delights and surprises as it sweeps along; it's more like going to a new Indian restaurant.

This is Matthew Bourne and it is Sadler's Wells so it goes without staying that the production is excellent without imposing itself on the dance or the music. It was simply a sumptuous experience and one I hope to repeat next time that it returns to Sadler's Wells.

Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands is wonderful

I was not too sure what to expect of Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands at Sadlers Wells as, somehow, I have never seen the film and the other Matthew Bourne productions that I had seen were quite different from each other and so gave no real clue as to what this one would be like. At the end of the performance I was stunned, delighted, charmed and moved.

The story itself is pretty simple; boy (Edward) dies, father makes artificial boy (Edward Scissorhands), father dies, artificial boy goes out in to the world where he makes friends and falls in love, artificial boy dies, his love carries on loving him into her old age. The story begins and ends at the Edward's grave.

Dramatically this falls in to three sections that go dark Gothic, jolly high school romp, dark Gothic. Think of a jam sandwich made with rye bread.

These changes in mood are reflected in the set design (graves are always good for Gothic) and in the dancing which is slow and passionate with few actors in the Gothic scenes but boisterous, feisty and funny with a stage full of actors for the jammy middle.

All sections of the show work well and the mood and the music flows well between them too to produce a single coherent drama that is truly dramatic.

The middle section with the full cast and a heavy dose of humour had some of the feel of The Carman and the Gothic sections had some of the intensity of Dorian Gray but in Edward Scissorhands Matthew Bourne has crafted something quite different from his other ballets but with the same assured creative stamp that makes all his productions sparkle and delight.

I do not do star rating but if I did this would be 5/5. I will gladly go to see it again and next time I'll take more people with me.

Dorian Gray at Sadler's Wells

Dorian Gray is the latest production from the fertile mind of Matthew Bourne, who first came to prominence with his all male version of Swan Lake.

The story is loosely based on the Oscar Wilde classic but the story is not that important, it serves as a thread to connect the episodic dances and the images.

You could probably resequence the scenes and it would still work.

The dancing is almost continually frenetic, erotic and intense. This keeps the excitement level and the emotional involvement high and makes for a most rewarding evening.

Matthew Bourne's The Car Man is a feast of dancing

The banners outside of the theatre say "Sadler's Wells is dance" and it is London's best venue for dance offering a vary interesting and varied programme throughout the year. Sadler's Wells is in Islington, which means that it is slightly the wrong side of London for me but the tortuous journey there is well worth it for the special performances, such as the one that I went to last night.

Matthew Bourne's The Car Man has been revived from the original 2000 show and is playing to packed audiences again. Matthew Bourne may be mostly known for his all male Swan Lake but he is now responsible for a number of shows that are popular with audiences and critics alike.

The Car Man takes some of the music and a little of the drama of Carmen but all that really means is that many of the tunes are familiar. The story is set in 50's America in a garage and adjacent diner and revolves around a new arrival to the town, the car man. The plot is gripping enough but it is the dancing that captivates you.

There is a large cast and most of them are dancing most of the time, often in little cameos away from the centre of the stage. At times it is difficult to decide which dancers to follow but that only adds to the experience. It is a truly stunning and enjoyable show.