The stage isn't quite as spacious as that of Edinburgh's Festival Theatre where this latest Bourne adventure was first seen last year.
But nothing can compromise the dark dramatic spirit or cramp the thrilling style of this bold new take on an old tale.
Rather than surrendering the sleeping Aurora to a stranger on the strength of one kiss, Bourne weaves in a youthful true love interest between the Princess and a commoner, Leo (the royal gamekeeper), and introduces a True Blood twist that ensures Leo will be on hand to re-awaken their future together. Very Gothick, and very funny too.
If Leo, aided by Count Lilac (the elegant vampire leader of some very fabulous fairies), is willing to play a century-long waiting game, so too is the broodingly malevolent Caradoc, son of the vengeful fairy who cursed Aurora in her crib. He appears at Aurora's 21st birthday, a sunlit Edwardian garden party where her inner wild child is dancing barefoot, unwittingly vulnerable to his influence. In Caradoc's arms, she acquires a heated sensuality that Bourne colours with a different energy to the soaring, buoyant and touchingly naive passion she explores with Leo. Suddenly, the whole conflict between fairy-tale good and evil resonates with the unnerving humanity of intense desires – written into the luscious fabric of Tchaikovsky's score and revealed in Bourne's choreography. From the cute puppet-baby Aurora to the flesh-and-blood Princess (Hannah Vassalo), we're given reasons a-plenty to care about this innocent creature's fate. If she's happy-ever-after with her twilight love Leo, we're more than delighted with Bourne's richly inventive Beauty.
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