Edward Scissorhands Festival Theatre Edinburgh 14th May 2024 Review
Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands is at the Festival theatre Edinburgh this week (Tue 14 to Sat 18 May) and it is fair to say that this production is going to be a “go to” event for fans of the original film and Matthew Bourne/New Adventures productions alike.
I have to admit that despite the original production of this “story told in movement” being nearly 20 years old (2005) this is the first time that I have seen it on-stage and it is a remarkable piece of story-telling as we actually have seven different ones interweaving with each other here – six very different families, (one in this new update being a same sex couple with a baby), and of course how Edward interacts with everyone.
I clearly remember the 1990 Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder being released and the impact that this quirky and often very funny spin on the classic Frankenstein story made on many cinemagoers at the time, but the story was so much more than that.
With a very clever original screenplay, Caroline Thompson turned Edward Scissorhands into far more than just an on screen pastiche of the horror movie genre and gave us all a character in Edward that many people seemed to identify with, a character who never really fitted into this world or understood how it worked. At an even deeper level, how does having no hands, being unable to physically touch the world around you with them, impact upon you, and more importantly, if you have large and sharp scissors instead of them, how do you hold someone that you love?
The first thing that is obvious in this production from the moment that the curtain rises is that this is a very meticulously crafted on stage world and a very high budget production. At a time when many touring companies are taking every opportunity to trim down their budgets, Matthew Bourne/New Adventures seem to be doing the opposite with a large cast and high end production values everywhere to be seen.
Here, set and costume designer Lez Brotherston has somehow combined the bright colour pallet of an Edward Hopper painting with those iconic snapshots of American small town life that Norman Rockwell immortalised forever on covers for Saturday Evening Post magazine. Lighting and sound designers Howard Harrison and Paul Groothuis combined their talents here to give this production and this town of “Hope Springs” a very distinctive and quirky feel with music from the original film score by Danny Elfman uniting stage and film productions together.
To put what is essentially a large pair of gauntlets on any dancer and deprive them of the use of their hands would be a major obstacle for most dancers, but tonight one of the most gifted dancers of his generation, Liam Mower (who was one of the three boys who shared the lead role in the original London cast of Billy Elliot), somehow managed to turn his Scissorhands into hugely expressive tools whilst using his body language and facial expressions to often say more than words ever could.
As this story spins off into a surreal love story, Edward and young Pegg Bogs become an unlikely Romeo and Juliet. With Pegg’s visual appearance drawing obvious inspiration from the first very slim and ponytailed Barbie Dolls, another layer of the surreal is added to this story.
As always with any Matthew Bourne production, every movement from every character is part of a story itself and there is so much going on here on stage, so many different stories being told at once, that I know I missed more than a few of them and will need to try and catch so many subtle things that went by so quickly if this production returns again.
I have only highlighted our two principal characters in this review as to include the performances of everyone would turn it into a small novella, but there are simply no weak performances here, everyone on stage is a different character, an individual personality that is brought to life by their respective performer.
Oddly though, this is the one Matthew Bourne production that I have seen to date where that unique quirkiness, that ability to re-look at a well-known story from a different angle, has been matched by the ability of the original source material to do exactly that too, and sometimes it is hard to see where Tim Burton’s world stops and Matthew Bourne’s starts. In the end though, does this really matter as the end result is so visually impressive and everyone in the audience tonight got to enter into a fantasy world created by a combination of many very special and unique talents.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
I have to admit that despite the original production of this “story told in movement” being nearly 20 years old (2005) this is the first time that I have seen it on-stage and it is a remarkable piece of story-telling as we actually have seven different ones interweaving with each other here – six very different families, (one in this new update being a same sex couple with a baby), and of course how Edward interacts with everyone.
I clearly remember the 1990 Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder being released and the impact that this quirky and often very funny spin on the classic Frankenstein story made on many cinemagoers at the time, but the story was so much more than that.
With a very clever original screenplay, Caroline Thompson turned Edward Scissorhands into far more than just an on screen pastiche of the horror movie genre and gave us all a character in Edward that many people seemed to identify with, a character who never really fitted into this world or understood how it worked. At an even deeper level, how does having no hands, being unable to physically touch the world around you with them, impact upon you, and more importantly, if you have large and sharp scissors instead of them, how do you hold someone that you love?
The first thing that is obvious in this production from the moment that the curtain rises is that this is a very meticulously crafted on stage world and a very high budget production. At a time when many touring companies are taking every opportunity to trim down their budgets, Matthew Bourne/New Adventures seem to be doing the opposite with a large cast and high end production values everywhere to be seen.
Here, set and costume designer Lez Brotherston has somehow combined the bright colour pallet of an Edward Hopper painting with those iconic snapshots of American small town life that Norman Rockwell immortalised forever on covers for Saturday Evening Post magazine. Lighting and sound designers Howard Harrison and Paul Groothuis combined their talents here to give this production and this town of “Hope Springs” a very distinctive and quirky feel with music from the original film score by Danny Elfman uniting stage and film productions together.
To put what is essentially a large pair of gauntlets on any dancer and deprive them of the use of their hands would be a major obstacle for most dancers, but tonight one of the most gifted dancers of his generation, Liam Mower (who was one of the three boys who shared the lead role in the original London cast of Billy Elliot), somehow managed to turn his Scissorhands into hugely expressive tools whilst using his body language and facial expressions to often say more than words ever could.
As this story spins off into a surreal love story, Edward and young Pegg Bogs become an unlikely Romeo and Juliet. With Pegg’s visual appearance drawing obvious inspiration from the first very slim and ponytailed Barbie Dolls, another layer of the surreal is added to this story.
As always with any Matthew Bourne production, every movement from every character is part of a story itself and there is so much going on here on stage, so many different stories being told at once, that I know I missed more than a few of them and will need to try and catch so many subtle things that went by so quickly if this production returns again.
I have only highlighted our two principal characters in this review as to include the performances of everyone would turn it into a small novella, but there are simply no weak performances here, everyone on stage is a different character, an individual personality that is brought to life by their respective performer.
Oddly though, this is the one Matthew Bourne production that I have seen to date where that unique quirkiness, that ability to re-look at a well-known story from a different angle, has been matched by the ability of the original source material to do exactly that too, and sometimes it is hard to see where Tim Burton’s world stops and Matthew Bourne’s starts. In the end though, does this really matter as the end result is so visually impressive and everyone in the audience tonight got to enter into a fantasy world created by a combination of many very special and unique talents.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com