The Midnight Bell – Must Keep On Ringing

Inspired by Patrick Hamilton’s novels, The Midnight Bell, based in London in the inter-war period is a fabulous work of dance which portrays the hopes and fears of ordinary men and women who leave their cheap boarding houses at night for the bars and pubs of fog-bound Soho and Fitzrovia. It is a work of full of pathos and thwarted romance.

In particular, the work focuses on the eponymous tavern, where a group of local lonely heart singletons gravitate to each evening to play out their affairs of the heart and hopefully seek some respite from their loneliness and the drudgery of their everyday lives.

But as is often the case in affairs of the heart, the one you love loves another, whilst the one you don’t love is desperately in love with you. Universal human emotions of love, anger, hurt and betrayal are played out between the characters using dance to tell each story and whilst these relationships don’t turn out well with happy endings, they are so believable and easy to relate to. We all have different ideas and hopes for our relationships and the characters who frequent The Midnight Bell tavern are no different.

Taking characters from the semi auto-biographical novel ‘Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky’ Matthew Bourne has once again demonstrated his close attention to period detail and in conjunction with Terry Davies (Music), Lez Brotherton (Set and Costume design), Paule Constable (Lighting) and Paul Groothuis (Sound) has created a stage version of what I can only imagine life was like living in the dingy, dark and sometimes sleazy backstreets of London in the 1930’s. As Bourne himself says ‘It’s not Noël Coward and glamorous people in silk dresses with cocktails’ but a back street pub where the drink readily flows and there are cigarettes a plenty.

The piece is interspersed with archive song recordings which the characters mimed along to – I enjoyed these vocal ‘interludes’ as they contrasted with the underpinning music score and to my mind helped to emphasis the evolving emotions of the characters involved.

All of the dancers were superb, expertly showing their characterisations through movement and facial expressions. The depiction of the homosexual relationship in particular was excellent, perfectly capturing the hopes and fears of a couple in a same sex relationship in the 1930’s. Also of note was the seduction of the very prim and proper Miss Roach by a ‘cad’ who simultaneously stole cash from her handbag before moving on to a dalliance with another. The unrequited love between of the young barmaid and her beau was sensitively portrayed as was her reluctant courtship with a lonely and much older man.

Those who have seen previous Matthew Bourne productions will not be disappointed by the choreography, which is both original and creative, featuring energetic full cast pieces interspersed with gentle duets and solos all of which were skilfully interpreted by the dancers of the New Adventures Company.

The Midnight Bell is not a traditional dance show but if you enjoy watching dance in all of its forms this show is really a ‘must see’. You will not be disappointed.

The Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield
Until 25th September (Thursday and Saturday Matinees)