Peaky Blinders may have ended on TV but there's a new dance version of the hit BBC series and it's currently being played out on the Welsh stage. The performance, which has toured to the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, starts with the anti-hero, First World War army tunneler Thomas Shelby, immersed in the horrors of the Great War as he, his companions - dead inside but still walking - and family carve out their places in the ganglands of 1920s Midlands.
The theatricality from Rambert’s Artistic Director, Benoit Swan Pouffer, and Peaky Blinders writer, Steven Knight, is stunning. The Moi Tran designed stage allows for multi levels of activity, including a trench that continues the theme of the war throughout the show, as bodies fall into it, dancers glide along it, and rise from it – all wonderful.
Add strobe lighting and pyrotechnics to create the industrial heartland, and seamless scene changes from opium dens to speakeasys, factories to a fairground and racecourse.
