'Play Without Words' reviews Ambler in reviews Kemp in reviews recent Matthew Bourne reviews more Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

Pantomime, masque or ballet, the notion of telling a story just through movement is hardly revelatory, but Bourne's eye for detail and feel for period, here the 1960s, plus his device of using three dancer/actors portraying the same character simultaneously, produces a layered historical kaleidoscope and emotional nuance way beyond pastiche.

Loosely based on Joseph Losey's 1963 film, The Servant, Anthony (Will Kemp, Ewan Wardrop, Richard Winsor) buys a Chelsea home, which gives his broody fiancée, Glenda (Saranne Curtin, Michaela Meazza, Emily Piercey) ideas of the domestic kind. However, his manservant, Prentice (Scott Ambler, Steve Kirkham, Eddie Nixon) has a few subversive ideas of his own and with the help of the indiscriminating sexual appetites of Anthony's old friend Speight (Eddie Nixon, Alan Vincent, Ewan Wardrop) the lunatics take over the asylum. Confused? You won't be thanks to clever costuming and Bourne's logistical clarity. And rather than muddying the waters, seeing three individuals instantly recognisable as the same character subtly enriches the plot, paradoxically, without the impression of excess baggage.

Lez Brotherston's set pushes into the 650 seater Lyttelton auditorium, making the stalls area literally the fourth wall of the slice of layered London he creates, rising from the ground floor apartment via the cast iron staircase to the West End streets, complete with red phone box and double decker bus, then to the peaks of Big Ben and the Post Office Tower pushing at the theatre's bare roof. Aided by Paul Constable's evocative lighting, the infinitely flexible staircase is a kitchen or bedroom, a plush nightclub with red light shades then a seedy Soho street. But it is Bourne's firm grasp of the ephemeral that makes the evening. Though at my preview performance some sequences were indulgently long, Bourne's brevity, light touch and carefully controlled buffoonery roll the action along, the whole infinitely more than its many parts, and though sex with everybody is one of the work's main thrusts, full frontal X rated exhibitions are ruthlessly avoided, as welcome as it is unexpected.

And as Alan Vincent's Speight, sheds his duffel coat to walk off with most of the dancing honours as his unbridled libido bounces off the other characters like a random pin ball, set piece dance routines are kept to a minimum. The multiple manservant romps to Worker's Playtime on the wireless, there's a cocktail party with Kenneth Mores and Audrey Hepburns all over the place while white rimmed sunglasses, cravats and pipes, pearls and leather hot pants dress the cavalcade with an irresistible nostalgia. And though the complex programme notes may set your alarm bells screeching, just forget them because Bourne invests a wealth of care and quality to magic up a unique new kind of pipedream. And it works.