Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty review: an ‘irresistible’ Gothic fairy tale

“Sleeping Beauty and vampires.” That unlikely pairing, said Lyndsey Winship in The Guardian, is the crux of Matthew Bourne’s “irresistible” dance-theatre production, which premiered in 2012 and which has now been revived at Sadler’s Wells, in advance of a lengthy UK tour.

Set to Tchaikovsky’s music, but with choreography that progresses from the conventionally balletic to more contemporary idioms, this gleefully over-the-top show packs in many of Bourne’s favourite things: a “fairy-tale twist, period details, farce and comedy of manners, visual humour”, and wittily extravagant designs courtesy of long-time collaborator Lez Brotherston.

In this reworking of the traditional ballet, Princess Aurora has already met her beloved, the royal gamekeeper Leo, when she falls into her 100-year sleep. “So how to keep him alive for a century and keep their love story going? Simple,” said Debra Craine in The Times. Make him a vampire, courtesy of a bite from Count Lilac, a “benevolent vampire fairy king”.

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Ashley Shaw and Andrew Monaghan make a “delightful” Aurora and Leo, said Charlotte Vickers in What’s On Stage. And Paris Fitzpatrick is “wonderfully creepy” as both Carabosse, the vampire fairy, and Caradoc, Leo’s love rival. The overall effect is of a “properly Gothic fairy tale”, one “that can blow away adults or children, with its balance of camp, giggles, and emotional punches”.

To me, the piece lacks the “emotional wallop” of Bourne’s very best work, said David Jays in the London Evening Standard – owing in part to a plot that feels forced rather than “gorgeously inevitable”. Still, Bourne’s “gothed up” Sleeping Beauty is a “sumptuous and ingenious ride”.

No, its “not quite top-flight Bourne”, agreed Mark Monahan in The Daily Telegraph. But it’s a “superior” piece of entertainment that “belts along with considerably more drama and purpose than most Sleeping Beautys”. There’s “collective fire and purpose” to the performances, and a mischievous swagger to the whole evening. “I suggest you get your teeth into [it] before daybreak sometime soon.”

Sadler’s Wells, London EC1 until 15 January, then touring until 29 April (new-adventures.net)