Never run with scissors! Or play with inflatables! Or search for acceptance in a small-minded small town in 1950s America! These are the harsh lessons for Edward Scissorhands, a boy with blades for fingers, in Matthew Bourne’s plumptuous dance version of the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp film.An elderly inventor cobbles together Edward from various body parts, but dies before he can replace the scissors with actual hands. A woebegone Liam Mower, playing the hero on opening night, uses his spiky prosthetics deftly – letting the blades scutter agitatedly in the air, or hang politely downwards. Mower also captures Edward’s stiff-legged gait and unsmiling bewilderment (in 2005, Bourne’s original dancers were inspired by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati).Edward reaches the local small town of Hope Springs, where kindly Peg Boggs (a beaming Kerry Biggin) takes him in. Suburban life and its pristine conformity is the ultimate horror movie for Burton and his fellow American filmmakers (Scissorhands is candy-coloured cousin to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet). Here, Howard Harrison’s lighting casts gothic shadows over the ticky-tacky houses and families that run the gamut from perky to creepy.Bourne’s New Adventures cast draw the neighbours in sharp, cartoonish lines – there’s always sparky movement rippling through the ensemble. Bourne adds some gay dads to this revival, and special fun is had by Nicole Kabera’s desperate housewife, working her minxy curves, Mami Tomotani’s religious nutjob, and Lyra Treglown as her glowering goth daughter.The story takes smoothly to movement. Bourne loves to choreograph people getting dressed – an particular challenge when sharp-edged fingers might slice through your pyjamas.
Edward’s story is structured around three dreamy duets. He first dances with Kim, Peg’s cheerleader daughter (Katrina Lyndon), in his imagination – inspired by her ballerina music box and by his impressive topiary – and then in swooning reality, in a swirl of shavings from his angelic ice sculpture. More widely, the town is swingdance crazy, adopting Edward’s angular arms as zany dance moves.Kim’s thuggish jock of a boyfriend (Ben Brown) gets handsy – no wonder she’s slowly drawn to the stranger who literally can’t touch her. Edward’s skill trimming hedges and hair briefly makes him beloved – until, plied with booze at the Christmas hop, his dancing turns dangerous and the town turns ugly.In some ways, the score is the star. Danny Elfman’s signature romantic spookery is gorgeously extended by composer Terry Davies. Honeyed chimes, circling voices, tender strings – cut by the snicker of scissor blades – introduce the tale, while desolate chords whimper like an unloved mutt. The tale of an outsider cast out by a mean-spirited community makes for a plush evening of storytelling, all the way to the magnificently kitsch curtain call.
