New Adventures in Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell
Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures is reviving and touring The Midnight Bell inspired by the gritty novels of Patrick Hamilton…
Glenn Graham and Michela Meazza in Matthew Bourne’s ‘The Midnight Bell’. © Johan Persson.
New Adventures / Matthew Bourne
The Midnight Bell
★★★★✰
London, Sadler’s Wells
12 June 2025
www.new-adventures.net
www.sadlerswells.com
Four years on from its creation, it’s easy to see why Matthew Bourne’s Midnight Bell won National Dance Awards that year — it’s just such a refreshing take on what a narrative dance work can be. Bourne is perhaps best known for his adaptations of well-known titles (Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella come immediately to mind) but relatively few will have heard of Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 book The Midnight Bell, which means Bourne and his collaborators have to work extra hard to create a world and reel you in. It is graft that has been well done by a team of crack creatives, and, as an immediate response, it makes me really want to see it again — there is so much I liked and so much I may have missed. Midnight Bell is a piece that you could mine and mine, and I applaud that depth.
The first thing to realise is that Midnight Bell is not an adaptation of the book, but rather a free take on characters found in several Hamilton books from 1929 through to the early 1950s. It has the subtitle ‘Intoxicated tales from darkest Soho’ because the common theme is alcohol, and the pub where they all drink and overlap is The Midnight Bell. The ten characters involved are not exactly ordinary Joes, but neither are they classic leads — a barman, a prostitute, an out-of-work actress, a gay policeman, a romantic schizophrenic, for example. They are all real people, all lonely, unhappy, yearning for love, and, in part, drinking to forget or be liberated in some way.
Bourne sets his world in dingy and rather seedy 1930s London. Brilliantly realised by Lez Brotherston (both sets and costumes), there is no glamour here. The drama unfolds in many cameo scenes, and the set neatly responds with buildings and spaces conjured quickly and seamlessly, supported by strong lighting from Paule Constable, which focuses the action and even uses follow-spots — a rather rare thing these days. There is more brilliance from the custom score of Terry Davies, who, along with sound designer Paul Groothuis, weaves nostalgic songs of the era (which the dancers mime to) into a dreamscape that supports the surface interactions of the characters but also gets right under their skin and inner demons.
Midnight Bell comes in at just under two hours, told over two acts with an interval. The first act really introduces the characters, and if you arrive not knowing much about the production and are looking for obvious lead characters and a through line, you might be thrown. All ten characters are leads, and the casting reflects that — all the dancers are New Adventures A-listers and have all played lead roles for Bourne many times before. A Bourne stage, any Bourne stage, is always groaning with dramatically gifted dancers showing real personality, but this is another leap on. So thrilling. That said, if I have one criticism, it’s that there are possibly too many scenes in the first act, and it would be nice to linger a little longer on the dancers.
With the characters set up, it’s the second act (nominally a month on) where the production moves up a notch, and we see the relationships ‘developing’ and floundering — nobody comes out a winner, and we grieve for them and their all-too-human foibles. Bourne’s choreography, particularly of gesture, and his duets are amongst his best and most moving. I won’t go through the entire cast, but I have to mention Glenn Graham and Michela Meazza reprising their Cad and Spinster roles (for which Meazza won a National Dance Award) — such an odd couple, but so deeply portrayed. Particular plaudits go to Dominic North’s barman, hopelessly in love with Ashley Shaw’s hard-working, if not overly successful, prostitute. There is no prospect of a Pretty Woman ending here.
It was Hamilton’s characters that spoke and ensnared Bourne, and he, in turn, draws us in and makes us care. All in all, The Midnight Bell is knockout work from a team of master craftsmen firing on all cylinders.