Rambert danced The Redemption of Thomas Shelby (of Peaky Blinders fame) at the Lowry’s Lyric Theatre on the 22nd of October. It’s an amazing performance, with equally amazing music and vocals provided by the on-stage band.
Ballet Chanté isn’t quite the right description but goes someway. The story is well known, and the choreography manages to captivate the ups and downs, and double crossings of the major protagonists, with a lot of throat slitting, scalping, shooting, and garrotting thrown in, together with some less gory moments and even some tender ones – though those are few.
The dance is energetic, to say the least, even in the second half where everyone is high on opium. The accompaniment was perfect at every stage, and in addition to that, a voice-over narrative also helps maintains the pace, which helped as at times it did start to lag slightly in some of the longer running scenes.
This is a very different evening, as would be expected from Rambert. It works very well, and the costumes were particularly good, especially when evoking the sleazier ide of life.
It’s playing for a few more nights before moving on to more UK and international venues, and I’d love to see how it’s received in Istanbul, where gangland Birmingham in the early 20th century isn’t probably that well known.
Paul Schofield for Canal Street Media.