Article in The Guardian appraising the Transformations season.

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Review from The Times.

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Is this a first - a play that doesn't require actors?
Matthew Bourne reassesses the nature of drama, you can guarantee that Toad will still be in a hole. By Jann Parry for The Observer:

Matthew Bourne doesn't need words. He can tell stories, disclose secrets and distinguish fantasy from reality, all without recourse to speech or surtitles. He does, though, require music. Play Without Words has a score by Terry Davies, played live on the Lyttleton stage.

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Spellbound by sensuality
Ismene Brown for The Daily Telegraph reviews Play Without Words at the Lyttelton Theatre


Beaufort Street in south-west London is a most desirable neighbourhood: tall, white terrace houses, bright-red phone boxes, silent squares echoing with the clippety-clop stiletto heels of sophisticated Chelsea girls and their dopey Etonian boyfriends.

The Salisbury pub nearby is deliciously low, as Professor Higgins might say, brown-stained, old-fashioned, the one place where all sorts meet. Manservants may sit alongside potential employers, wideboys may eye up young ladies in Hardy Amies.

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"Play Without Words" is a remarkable work, among one of Matthew Bourne's best in my view. Don't be out off by the thought that it isn't dance. The movement could only be performed by actor/dancers of high quality and has links to the the choreography based on everyday movement seen in DV8 productions.

Play without Words
By David Dougill for The Sunday Times

Matthew Bourne and his New Adventures company have two hits running in London this season: the popular Nutcracker! at Sadler’s Wells and the ingenious Play Without Words back in repertory at the National Theatre, which commissioned it last year. Based on Joseph Losey’s 1963 film The Servant.

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Play Without Words
National Theatre
December 31st, 2003

Matthew Bourne’s Play Without Words takes the best of three worlds – dance, theatre and film and weaves them into a fine tuned work of art that is smashingly clever and sharp, not to mention sexy, humorous and sometimes dark. Terry Davies’ jazzy score fits every moment like a glove and Lez Brotherston once again dazzles and shows off why he’s been nominated and won so many awards for his designs.

Matthew’s dancers cannot be applauded enough. The same cast from last year is back with one exception. All combine their individual talents and personalities to bring to life Matthew’s imaginative choreography and keen ability to tell a story on many different levels. I, of course, would have given anything to see Will Kemp as Anthony. But Sam Archer, who came in to fill the spot Will was in last year, was just out and out fabulous. His up-tight, thin-lipped, repressed Anthony was simply marvelous. The guy was flawless and for me, just barely edged out Richard Winsor and Ewan Wardrop’s own unique and captivating Anthonys.

Nobody can do an evil glint or wolfish grin like Scott Ambler. His Prentice along with Eddie Nixon’s sneaky, smirky version were delicious. But it was Steve Kirkham’s snobby, nose in the air, prickly Prentice that just grabbed me. He was SO the affected servant, but mind you, not over the top with it. It was a very smooth, positively spot on performance. He also played an Andy Warhol look-alike character in the party scene with this dreadful green suit and fey scarf. Everything he did in that scene from checking himself in the mirror to letting loose frightfully on the dance floor left me with tears in my eyes from laughing. He was superb.

Speight was played with a decadently knavish and dangerous bite by Wardrop and Nixon, but Alan Vincent just has bad-to-the-bone bad boy down to an art form and his Speight was hard to resist.

I couldn’t possibly choose between the three Glenda’s, Saranne Curtin, Michela Meazza and Emily Piercy, as they all swooped in perfectly with their very cool keep it all together Audrey Hepburn/Grace Kelly style....until their love lives fell apart. Belinda Lee Chapman’s sex kitten housemaid matched to Valentina Formenti’s much more coldhearted version, were both tantalizing.

"Play Without Words" is like Hitchcock’s "Rear Window". You feel like you are sitting across the way in your home – peeking into the neighbor’s windows. And what you see is far more than you ever bargained for in return. You also find you've come away an addicted voyeur to those lives and you can't help but want to come back and peek some more.

In my opinion, this is by far Matthew Bourne’s best work to date. I hope he will be able to do another small scale production like this again; although where he would fit it in, I’ve no clue. 2006? No matter. With his track record for inventive, refreshing and thoroughly entertaining productions, anything he does will be well worth the wait....just as it is well worth flying across the ocean just to see.

~Dani

<small>[ 07 July 2004, 06:05 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Play Without Words was performed at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley in May. I had never seen it before, but I greatly admired the film The Servant. Matthew Bourne has captured the spirit of the film, with its sinister undertones and sensuality, but he brings more humour to this elegant piece of narrative dance. The designer, Lez Brotherson, succeeds in conveying a nostalgic, sixties atmosphere for which Terry Davies's jazz score is ideal. The dancers, themselves, were outstanding. The whole perfomance was a non-stop pleasure to watch and listen to.

Congratulations to Matthew Bourne for the National Dance Award:

National Dance Awards

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Play Without Words is headed to the U.S. shortly - New York, Los Angeles and Berkeley - March 14 - June 14.

Check schedule at New Adventures.net

Also, here is a short clip from the production courtesy of Entertainment Plus Japan

In addition to the National Dance Award for 2004 which Carol has mentioned, PWW won two Oliviers in 2003 for Best Entertainment and Best Theatre Choreographer.

Don't miss it!!

Dani

I believe the Berkeley performances have been cancelled and I am waiting for the rest of the US tour to unravel as well, as Cal Performances is usually a lynchpin for North American tour productions...

For some reason, other than "Swan Lake," Bourne's success in the UK doesn't seem to be translating into marketing dollars for US promoters.

Here's the Chronicle article (thanks, DavidH!):

The Los Angeles dates, at least, will likely stay. The show has an 8-week run in LA, in a a theatre with a very strong subscription base (read: at least some guaranteed sales). Bourne's productions of "Swan Lake," "Cinderella" and I believe also "The Car Man" each played exclusive US engagements at LA's Ahmanson without a tour afterwards (based on its success in LA, "Swan Lake" was later engaged for Broadway, while on the flip side, the "Car Man" tour collapsed after Los Angeles). So the Berkely cancellation may not completely unravel the already short tour - it was only going to play one week in Berkely to LA's 8 and New York's 3.

<small>[ 29 January 2005, 02:30 AM: Message edited by: art076 ]</small>

art, I remember "The Car Man" tour cut short and I have a memory that it was a post 9/11 problem.

"Play Without Words" ranks as one of Bourne's finest in my view and received almost universal critical acclaim in the UK, which is not always the case for his work. I'm pleased that the major part of the West coast dates will go ahead.

<small>[ 29 January 2005, 07:43 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>