Matthew Bourne’s erotic swinging 60’s dance drama, which premiered at the National Theatre in 2002, is, as the title says, wordless story-telling. Terry Davies provides a cool Jazz score. Lez Brotherston creates an expressionistic London setting. The company includes Richard Winsor and Saranne Curtin who were in the original production. The revival is most welcome.
Bourne is a great movie buff and the scenario is based on Joseph Losey’s 1963 film, based on Robin Maugham’s cult novella and scripted by Harold Pinter. It starred Dirk Bogarde as a manservant who seduces a young aristocrat played by James Fox. Their intense relationship and reversal of roles became a metaphor for a very British class-war in which the working classes triumph over the pampered, effete, indolent aristocracy.
The psychodrama, theatrical, stylish, noir and jokey, is choreographed but not danced. There are no opportunities for big ensembles and for dance solos and duets. It is all narrative body language. There are references to other movies, too. The strength of the piece is that each leading role is played by three different dancer-actors simultaneously, each showing different facets, nuances, stages and images in their relationships. The action is thus both compressed and elaborated. Each trio wear identical clothes, hairstyles, make-up and carry identical props so there is no confusion. There is a witty revue sketch when two menservants dress and undress two masters side-by-side, which recalls a sequence in Bourne’s Town and Country. My only disappointment is the triple ending has been ditched.