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From the moment we stepped into the piano bar and were welcomed into the venue, the evening already felt alive — theatre as atmosphere, not just performance.
The show starts with a single spotlight that lands on the impresario and the iconic red shoes, satin catching the light with quiet intensity. You feel immediately that this is a story about devotion — about what happens when passion moves from inspiration into possession.
Watching The Red Shoes by Matthew Bourne for the first time, I found myself drawn into a world where artistry is discipline, beauty, and risk in equal measure.
Act One — Tradition, Craft, Presence
Act One opens “at the ballet,” a classic window into elegance and mastery set within a richly evoked 1940s world. Particularly powerful is the presence of dancers from the Global Majority inhabiting this classical space with authority — essential representation that strengthens this story.
The scenography is exceptional. Curtains rotate, divide, and reshape the stage, creating a theatre within a theatre. The set, sound, and lighting take you to the multiple perspectives of the different characters and transform your experience to on and off stage. The windstorm sequence that recreates the iconic paper scene from The Red Shoes film was a visceral theatrical force, and made me feel part of the show. The beach sequence with its bouncing ball brought playful, light formation and exquisite shapes.
Movement as Story
At the heart of the production, Cordelia Braithwaite leads with striking presence as Victoria Page, supported by Andy Monaghan’s commanding Boris Lermontov and Dominic North’s emotionally grounded Julian Craster. Across the stage, the entire company deliver work that is sublime, powerful, and exquisitely danced — interpreting Bourne’s love letter to the film with passion, comedy, and beauty.
Bodies bend, suspend, and surge with precision and expressive clarity. Classical vocabulary meets contemporary fluidity, creating choreography that doesn’t simply accompany the narrative — it becomes it. Scenes unfold like moving paintings, emotion carried through line, weight, and rhythm.
The Story Beneath the Spectacle
At its core, the production explores the artist’s relentless desire to find that singular moment where expression becomes truth. It reveals how discipline, collaboration, and sacrifice converge to create theatrical magic, while exposing the power and control of the impresario who shapes that vision. Layered within this is a deeply human story of love, ambition, and the shifting emotional terrain of relationships — asking what must be given, and what may be lost, in pursuit of artistic perfection.
What Remains
What lingers beyond the final bow is a question:
What is your passion — and how do you allow it space to live fully? And if devotion overtakes everything, what are the consequences?
This show is brilliant for newcomers and deeply fulfilling for seasoned audiences, this is storytelling through movement at its most compelling.
A must-see.