Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty is subtitled A Gothic Romance, and from Lez Brotherston’s brooding sets to the plot’s preoccupation with issues of blood, Bourne is true to his vision. The set-up, with Princess Aurora (Ashley Shaw) cursed by the dark fairy Carabosse (Adam Maskell), is traditional. The big reveal, as the curtain goes down on Act 1, is that Count Lilac, king of the fairies (danced with splendidly farouche authority by Christopher Marney), is a vampire. Pricked by the thorn of a black rose, Princess Aurora is immured in a domain of the undead, presided over by Carabosse’s son, the suavely sinister Caradoc (Maskell). From here, Aurora’s suitor Leo (Dominic North) must rescue her if true love is to prevail.
So far, so good. Exposition is clear, and Brotherston’s designs, especially for the wild, buxom fairies, establish a suitably enchanted atmosphere. The puppet baby Aurora, climbing the curtains and peering through courtiers’ legs, is adorable, and Maskell is darkly glamorous in his dual role. But despite its virtues, this handsome and ingeniously plotted production founders on two substantial rocks. The first is the lack of a love story we can invest in. North’s Leo is never more than an amiable cipher, much less compelling and complex than the creatures of the night who surround him, and Shaw’s saccharine Aurora seems to be in a different show altogether, forever darting girly glances at the audience and only vaguely engaging with North, even when dancing with him. The other, less resolvable issue is that of Tchaikovsky’s score. Sweeping and symphonic, a formally romantic evocation of the French ancien régime, it declines to bend itself to Bourne’s purposes. A larky duet for Aurora and Leo is an uncomfortable fit for the transcendently grand-scale Rose Adagio, and in Act 2 the ensemble dances, forced into a limited stage-space by the set, seem to go on for ever while the plot stands still. A flawed piece then, but still a fine entertainment.
