For some reason entry was delayed into the Hippodrome last night, but the wait did offer the chance to see the size of a sell-out crowd, stretching from almost the Watershed to Colston Hall, on St Augustine’s Parade before it eventually filed in past the bag search. Matthew Bourne is popular in these parts!

As well as being a gifted choreographer, Bourne is a great showman. As in his memorable production of Sleeping Beauty that toured here last year, his Red Shoes is packed with pace, performance and presentation. Again complimented by the scintillating skills of set and costume designer Lez Brotherston and lighting guru Paule Constable, Bourne goes the extra mile to bring us a drama and dance to match Powell and Pressburger’s vision for their film of the late 1940s. What marks out a Bourne production is his ability to balance darker emotion with wit, slushy display with underlying sexual tension. With his obvious love of spectacle, Red Shoes, like all his previous productions, is lavished with colour and detail.

Red Shoes follows the film script closely, and retains some devilish enchantment from the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, as the story takes us from London to sunny Monte Carlo. At the heart of it a talented young dancer becomes torn between love and her art, and between the two men who adore her – the impresario Lermontov who bestows stardom on her, and the composer Julian Craster, who writes a ballet for her then marries her, putting their careers at risk.

Flame-haired Ashley Shaw plays Victoria (Vicky) Page, the up and coming Prima Ballerina in Lermontov’s company. Rarely off-stage during the two-hour performance, Shaw danced with abandon in a role that demanded sensitivity and athleticism in equal measure throughout. Her triple floor slide while hanging on to lover Craster was nothing less than awesome, and her movement en pointe was always impressive. Sam Archer brought a brooding quality to the ambitious Boris Lermontov and the role of composer Julian Craster was brilliantly realised by Chris Trenfield, whose pas de deux with Shaw often comprised lifts that rendered gravity insignificant.

As in the film, the production cleverly takes us back as well as front of stage. Brotherston’s swiveling proscenium arch is a thing of wonder as it dangles, advances and retreats to create new spaces within seconds, never better than when revealing by turn the plush interior of Lermontov’s apartment, then the down-at heel-bedsit of Craster.

It would be a shame not to mention the ensemble that dances a wonderful beach scene, and creates the funniest moments of the night with a seedy East End vaudeville show and the swanky Lady Neston’s Soirée.

As a backdrop, the music of Bernard Herrman (Fahrenheit 451, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, Vertigo, Psycho), adapted and arranged by Terry Davies, added to the emotional angst with sinister waltzes and swirling discordant passages, especially during the Red Shoes ballet within a ballet, in which Vicky is first tempted devil-like by the wonderful Grisha Ljubov (Glenn Graham) then damned to forever dance by donning the crimson-ribboned shoes.

Red Shoes is a visual feast that will live long in the memory of those lucky enough to see it.  ★★★★★     Simon Bishop     5^th April 2017