Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell: New Adventures – Sadler’s Wells, London (LAST CHANCE TO SEE)

Soho tales of love and heartache unfold in The Midnight Bell. Matthew Bourne more than achieves his aim of showcasing the different love stories that dance can explore.

The Midnight Bell

Although Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell is based on the works of Patrick Hamilton, this is an exercise in world-building rather than a straightforward adaptation. Hamilton is perhaps most famous today for writing the play (later film) Gas Light, which is the origin of the term ‘gaslighting’. He wrote many other works, however, including a number of novels centred on Soho in the first half of the 20th Century. His characters are not glamorous elites at cocktail parties; the people we see, some drawn straight from the novels, are ordinary, working-class people.

What Bourne sets out to do in The Midnight Bell, and I would say more than achieves, is to showcase the range of relationships that dance can convey. If all you’ve seen is classical ballet, you may be under the impression that dance is best suited to sweet, boy/girl romances. Here, however, we see a spinster in a dalliance with a cad; a young gay man struggling with his sexuality; a barman in love with a prostitute (or the idea of her). Even without a ‘plot’ in the normal sense, this is a rich work, and a particularly enthralling one.

Are there limits to what of this seedy Soho underworld of bedsits and late night pints can be conveyed through dance alone, however? Interpreting a lonely spinster is straightforward enough, I guess: we have a visual language for that. Or a cad, or a plucky young prostitute. But if I hadn’t bought the programme, would I have known that Mr. Bone’s struggle was specifically schizophrenia? Or that Netta Longdon was an out of work actress? I don’t quite know how you dance either of those scenarios. Not that this is a statement on the talents of the dancers, who were superb; just an observation that when a story is brand new, there may be some intentions that are lost on the audience.

Brand New Work From New Adventures

The Midnight Bell is brought to audiences by New Adventures, Matthew Bourne’s dance company. As well as being brand new choreography, the music has been composed by Terry Davies for the piece. It is fitting and atmospheric, the sound of dancehall music with a strong bass component. A few 1930s songs are interspersed, mimed by the dancers to illustrate what they are feeling or experiencing.

My favourite thing about The Midnight Bell, however, was its set. It’s funny – I was thinking early on that the softly lit city skyline backdrop reminded me of Bagdad Cafe. And lo and behold, who was the set designer for both productions? Lez Brotherston. Something I enjoy immensely about writing these reviews is that I am slowly getting to know directors and designers as well as performers.

But anyway, the set. It is a sort of dreamy Soho world. Buildings, beds and bars fly in and out of centre stage to evoke different spaces. Paule Constable‘s lighting include’s neon signs which make it clear whether we are in a hotel, a cinema or a pub. And there are some immensely clever scenes devised by Bourne where different couples in their own worlds inhabit the same space or the same bed. I wish I had half the vision of these creatives.

A final quick note on the performers. This was very much an ensemble piece, but a few dancers stand out in my memory. Michela Meazza’s spinster had a very controlled energy. Liam Mower and Andrew Monaghan were particularly poignant. And Richard Winsor as George Bone, despite my breezy comments earlier, did convey his character’s struggle masterfully.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 4/5

Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell – New Adventures on until 9 October at Sadler’s Wells (as part of a wider tour)