Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House
London WC2, until 5 Jan
These days, there are very few storytellers on the dance stage. Which is a pity, because storytelling is something we Brits do supremely well, given half a chance - vide the work of choreographers such as Matthew Bourne, Cathy Marston and William Tuckett. In schools and company workshops, however, the abstract or 'concept-based' notion of choreography has a near-unbreakable stranglehold.
Abstraction has its place, but the anxiety to produce a new Henri Oguike or Wayne McGregor has led to the serious neglect of narrative choreography and the encouragement in some quarters of work so arid and emotionally unrewarding as to be actively audience-proof.
This means we don't see enough of fine, freelance dancer-actors like Christopher Akrill and Charlotte Broom. Both deserve to be better known; Broom brings poignancy and wit to every role she undertakes (most recently in Cabaret in the West End), and Akrill's Captain Alving in Cathy Marston's Ghosts was one of the stand-out dance theatre performances of recent years. So it's good to see them united in Tuckett's Pinocchio, which is notionally for children, but actually blends the suggestive and the macabre to pretty adult effect. 'If it's fun, how can it be bad?' asks Akrill's ingenuous boy-puppet, as Ewan Wardrop's avuncular Stromboli encourages the children to smoke and drink and Broom's Fox performs a disturbingly erotic striptease.
Tuckett has had his successes on the full-company stage (Seven Deadly Sins, The Canterville Ghost), but his great talent is on the smaller scale. Give him a fur hat and a Hornby train set and he'll give you Anna Karenina. Pinocchio, like his Wind in the Willows, is a delight: sharply witty, properly sentimental, perfectly pitched in all of its elements.
As things stand, Matthew Bourne is the undisputed king of commercial dance theatre. It would be good to see a challenger step forward.
