Review: Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell – the masterful storyteller returns

When Play with Words was first seen in theatres in 2001, there was a buzz about town surrounding the innovation in storytelling. There was a similar thrill at Sadler’s Wells this week with the return of The Midnight Bell (until 21 June). Bourne brought his best assets – his ability to adapt a novel onto the stage, and his well-honed company, a collection of artists that emerged from a variety of conservatoire of training in England. The uniqueness of New Adventures, in both the size of the company and the eclecticism of the artists, is a celebration of Bourne’s achievements over the last few decades. The ten artists in The Midnight Bell, first choreographed in 2021, usher in a whirlwind of narratives that emerge from the almost-forgotten British writer Patrick Hamilton.

The Midnight Bell is a beautiful production. It moved between being cinematic and highly theatrical. Terry Davies’ music transports the audience to the bygone era in the 1930s, somewhere in London. The score is magical in its tones and textures. The designs by Bourne’s longtime collaborators, Lez Brotherston and Paule Constable, framed the setting with several suspended signs that shift across the London landscape. The costumes defined the period with an effective colour palette. The ten characters, inspired by Hamilton’s novel that was published in 1929, emerge as the music propels into the night. Dominic North opens The Midnight Bell – as the waiter, he moves with ease and leads the audience into the travails of the pursuit of love.

Bourne’s direction and choreography explore the various engagements with different kinds of love: unrequited love, lustful love, desperate love, and as a daring moment for the 1930s, homosexual love. Ashley Shaw is captivating as a young prostitute. Michaela Meazza shines in her role as a lonely spinster, alongside Glenn Graham’s perilously sleazy role as ‘Ernest Ralph Corse’. Bryony Pennington, in her role as the barmaid who considers marrying the boring ‘Mr Eccles’ (Reece Causton), grows in character as the narrative unfolds. Daisy May Kemp, as the out-of-work actress, is well-paired with Alan Vincent (as Geroge Harvey Bone, a tortured romantic’). The two young men, Frank (Andrew Monaghan) and Albert (Liam Mower), explore the kind of love which Hamilton would have seen flourish in the parks after dark, in seedy nightclubs, or flourish in the banter in the pub. What emerges through The Midnight Bell is a speculation on the reality of everyday lives and the discreetness of homosexuality.

The score shares the limelight with the intricately beautiful choreography, and the atmospheric lighting and stage design. Each of the ten dancers tell their story with such unique qualities; the performance is a masterful exercise in manifesting a narrative from page to stage. I was less taken by the mimicking of singing to the Caruso-style songs. It felt shallow at times, with some moments more successful than others. But that’s the only flaw of The Midnight Bell. It is so worth catching this production (playing until 21 June at Sadler’s Wells, and then further touring until September), and, thanks to Bourne, many of us will be introduced (or reminded) about the writings by Hamilton. Clearly, a worthy exercise in adapting British literature by a team of British collaborators.

Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel

Dr Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel is a dance scholar, educator and published author. She is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dance (2003), the Universities of Durham and Surrey, and London Metropolitan University (2013). Her doctoral research focussed on Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (1923), and the re-imaginings by contemporary choreographers Angelin Preljocaj and Mauro Bigonzetti. Kathrina is a former director of the Society of Dance History Scholars (now Dance Studies Association). Her scholarship on ballet histories has been published in peer-reviewed anthologies and journals, as well as newspapers, high-end magazines, and online blogs. She has authored a book on the legacy of Nathalie Poutiatine and ballet in Malta (Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, 2020) and co-edited an extensive and pioneering anthology titled The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet (Oxford University Press, 2021).