Any show that comes with a 12-word title hitched to its skirts had better be able to live up to itself. The Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs and the Victims of Death in Smithereens has the style to carry it off.
Concocted in a curious mutant twilight, Smithereens (for short) is an atmospheric and imaginative tour de force that finds Lea Anderson re-uniting her two dance companies - the all-female Cholmondeleys and the boys-only Featherstonehaughs - for the first time in seven years. The result is awash with fin de siècle decadence and well worth the wait.
Showing an uncanny ability to mine a twisted beauty from the heart of the grotesque, Anderson's take on cabaret style is a shadowland populated by a host of weird and wonderful characters who owe as much to Twin Peaks and Mad Max as they do to Sally Bowles. The ever-changing chorus line, whose line dances punctuate the show, sometimes sport stylish masks, but sometimes feature no faces at all.
They lend a suitably sinister edge to a production steeped in the delights of the dark. Smithereens is a world where it's forever after midnight, its gothic glamour subtly spotlit as a continually shifting stage makes way for a new turn to weave some slightly pervy magic. Whether it's a torch singer whose voice has gone into reverse or a ballerina in a black tutu bedecked with baby doll heads, in Smithereens you are only ever seconds away from a new diversion. Dressed to kill, with costumes by Oscar-winning designer Sandy Powell, Smithereens is subtly held together by musical duo Steve Blake and Dean Brodrick (the Victims of Death) whose tunefully evocative interventions effectively act as the MC. This leaves Anderson free to create some of her most potent choreography to date.
Her skill for twisting limbs into the unlikeliest combinations and making everything look unnaturally natural is perfectly suited to this black cabaret context. It's a scratchy gramophone world of mystery and intense romance, the ghost of Garbo hanging in the ether during a stunning sequence in slinky, shiny frocks. As worn by both Cholmondeleys and Featherstonehaughs, of course - it's that kind of club.
Not that Smithereens is without its flaws. A rare lapse into self-indulgence with a sustained masked voguing sequence (just how long can anyone listen to the sound of a scratchy record needle missing the groove?) only serves to point up the potency of the rest. Because, for the most part, Smithereens is seductively spellbinding.
Until tonight. Box office: 0181-237 1111. October 26: Gardner Arts Centre, Brighton (01273 697975) and October 28 Truro Hall, Cornwall (01872 262466) then touring through November.
