THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By Steven Knight, choreographed by Benoit Swan Pouffer and produced by Caryn Mandabach Productions
Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Rosebery Avenue, London, EC1R 4TN until August 16, 2025
At a time when dance is feeling the pinch, especially touring companies, it is great to welcome a dance show to London that nearly fills the vast Sadler’s Wells stage.
First created in Birmingham in 2023, where the story is of course set, it’s a joint collaboration between Rambert Dance, the Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre and the Lowry and this staging is the last stop on a tour which encompassed Paris, Southampton, Birmingham and Norwich. It did an extensive tour in 2024 and luckily has also been filmed by the BBC but to get the real experience this has to be seen live.
That’s for two reasons: it’s exhilarating rock stadium aesthetic and the pulsating beat of its live on-stage band who play a specially commissioned score by Roman GianArthur as well as iconic Peaky Blinders show tracks from the likes of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Radiohead, Anna Calvi, The Last Shadow Puppets, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.
Steven Knight’s hit show was set in Birmingham and followed the exploits of the eponymous crime gang in the direct aftermath of the First World War. The fictional gang of Irish Traveller/Romani origins was loosely based on a real urban youth gang. For the dance version he created a prequel to the series that begins with the Shelby brothers return from fighting in the trenches of the Somme and dovetails into a love story between Tommy and the mysterious Grace. Knight also got the Birmingham poet and legend Benjamin Zephaniah to record the narration for the piece, all the more poignant as he passed away very soon afterwards.
One of my gripes about new narrative ballets based on popular works of fiction, which are perceived as an easy sell, is that you often just end up with movement that degenerates into silent movie acting so as to wade through waves of often tedious plot. Indeed, there is too much plot here as well, and Act Two is weighed down with tying up loose ends. Act One, however, is a stunner.
What singles this piece out is Rambert supremo Benoit Swan Pouffer’s choreography, which is complex, poised, and always eye-catching. His steps are at times artfully ravishing, visceral, sensual, and on occasion witty, which is welcome relief in such a dark story. Whiskey-fueled fight scenes are central to it, of course, and his lightning-quick set pieces really have ‘cojones’.
Designer Moi Tran obviously copies the TV show’s ‘noir’ aesthetic but doesn’t let this become an excuse to skimp on design elements. The central set which is an elevated rectangular moat is enhanced with some wonderfully lavish settings such as the bordello scene. Richard Gellar’s costumes are a sumptuous wallow too, clearly located in the 1920s but not hidebound by it and which have a distinctly modern edge. Some audience members pay tribute by coming dressed as the characters.
A key component of the show, though, is the grandeur of Natasha Chivers’ lighting design which treats it all like a vast cathedral. The epic sweep is perfect for a story which, although set in the parochial grim poverty of industrial interwar Birmingham, has an epic scope because it deals with such eternal themes as vengeance and vendettas and lives lived on the edge.
The quality of the ensemble is phenomenal and it’s great that we expect this from Rambert and they deliver. Conor Kerrigan has the brooding presence to embody the nihilism of Tommy, and his wiry, sculpted frame dominates every scene he is in. New York born Naya Lovell is more than a match for him in the very demanding multi-dimensional part of Grace.
You don’t need to be a fan of the series or indeed know anything about it to enjoy this exhilarating dance epic.
