Review: MATTHEW BOURNE’S THE MIDNIGHT BELL, Sadler’s Wells - Tour
Photo credit: Johan Persson
Matthew Bourne, a choreographer synonymous with theatrical reinvention, brings The Midnight Bell back to Sadler’s Wells, a stage long entwined with the legacy of his boundary-pushing dance-theatre company, New Adventures. Known for reimagining classics like Swan Lake and The Red Shoes, Bourne doesn’t just retell stories — he inhabits them, reshapes them, and draws out their quietly aching human cores.
This work, which first premiered in 2021, was born from the still air of lockdown isolation. But the piece turns its gaze on a different kind of confinement: the internal loneliness that can follow you into even the most crowded of rooms. Inspired by Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 novel The Midnight Bell, the production conjures a fog-drenched 1930s London where desire and disillusionment linger in every doorway and backstreet.
Hamilton’s novel, the first in his Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky trilogy, is a study of failed romance, social class, and quiet despair, set against the backdrop of working-class Soho. Bourne takes this melancholic world and translates it through movement, evoking the brittle edges of longing and the shadows cast by unmet expectations.
But this is no sentimental trip through nostalgia. With understated elegance, Bourne and his dancers build a world not through grand spectacle, but through highly detailed, precise movement and gestures that speak whole volumes. The result is a kind of kitchen-sink surrealism style ballet.
Weaving together the stories of a barmaid, a spinster, a closeted young man, a prostitute, a cad, and others, the choreography resists tidy arcs. Instead, it lingers in longing. The narratives don’t announce themselves, and occasionally risk becoming too opaque. But certain duets shine: Ashley Shaw as Jenny Maple, a young sex worker, and Dominic North’s Bob, a besotted waiter, deliver a sequence that feels like it might dissolve under its own sweetness. All the dancers have the opportunity to demonstrate their embodied skill, bringing individuality and detail to each of their movements.
The aesthetic is a character in its own right. Lez Brotherston’s gorgeous design captures the glamour and grime of 1930s Soho pubs that are part sanctuary, part trap. His costumes feel lived-in, like fabric soaked in stories. Paule Constable’s lighting design doesn’t just illuminate, it glows and haunts, echoing the light of cinemas, restaurant signs, and streetlamps. It hangs in the space like its own restless presence. Paul Groothuis’ sound design nestles into the bones of the production, paired with Terry Davies’ original score, which blends seamlessly with era-appropriate songs to ground us in time and tone.
There’s a sadness that runs through the work but not a hopelessness. Each character is straining toward something: love, touch, recognition, escape. Their movements don’t scream for attention but cry out like echoes in an empty room.
At times, it feels like a Soho version of Hopper’s Nighthawks, or a half-forgotten painting brought suddenly to life. It’s a dance about what isn’t said. About what isn’t quite reached. About the quiet weight of being alone while surrounded by people. Resisting full-blown melodrama, there is restraint, and within that restraint, something piercing.
It’s a slow burn, and some narrative threads remain more impressionistic than complete but that can be forgiven. The Midnight Bell doesn’t ask to be felt nor solved, and it feels like a cigarette smoked alone at closing time.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Stephanie Osztreicher
