'Edward Scissorhands' reviews recent Matthew Bourne reviews 'Gloria' reviews 'Tanglewood' reviews Cojacaru in reviews Acosta in reviews recent RB reviews more Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

Lez Brotherstone has recreated the 1990 cult film’s pastel hued Suburbia as a miniature “Bourneville” (Bourne admits the film appears created with him in mind), a 1950s soap box advert with pinafores, Tony perms, quiffs and family car rides all superbly lit by Howard Harrison’s candy colours.

Into this ring-of-confidence perfection stumbles Edward (Sam Archer), a Frankenstein creation with his knowledge of human relationships a blank page, a little boy lost expression and a lethal collection of blades instead of hands. Peg Boggs (Etta Murfitt) mothers him, husband Bill (Scott Ambler) does as he’s told while teenage daughter Kim (Kerry Biggins) falls in love with him.

Terry Davies’s arrangement of Danny Elfman’s original film score is Hollywood lush, tongue in cheek and infinitely danceable, which is where the trouble starts. Bourne’s old flare is there in the weirdest seduction ever seen in the West End between reluctant Archer’s Scissorhands and rapacious red head, Joyce (Michela Meazza), involving a bean bag, Joyce’s husband, his Flymo and a washing machine climax.

But Bourne’s dance making is otherwise subdued, perhaps due to his deep respect for film making and, lacking his expected spiky edge, production numbers flow with the crackle of treacle.

Currently, in Covent Garden, Gloria, Kenneth MacMillan’s sublime homage to the World War I dead, closes a mixed offering in a blaze of choreographic glory with dream team Alina Cojacaru, Carlos Acosta and Thiago Soares. Earlier dancer Alastair Marriott’s ROH dance making debut, Tanglewood, lacks only confidence to confirm a brilliant future.