Dance

Matthew Bourne’s Highland Fling

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

*****

BILLED as ‘a romantic wee ballet’, this Highland Fling packs a full-on belter of a lewdly uninhibited opening! And it’s pure dead hilarious, so it is. The kilted groom, James, is slumped in the grotty lavvie of a Glasgow club: out his skull on booze, drugs and - maybe, just maybe - an inner despair at his impending nuptials to the lovely, and very keen, Effie. Whatever is coursing through his veins, it’s sent out signals to another dimension, for a mysterious lovelorn Sylph - sooty-eyed, bedraggled, on the feral side - is suddenly on his case, and she’s resourcefully tenacious.

When James’s drunken mates erupt into the Gents, the mayhem escalates, with Matthew Bourne’s choreography piling comedic, characterful details into steps that swagger with a lust for life... or for your best friend’s future partner. There are wittily mischievous quirks in Bourne’s updated take on the classic 19th century La Sylphide, and in Lez Brotherston’s hectically tartan-rampant designs, but even at the height of the Act One frivolity there are the seeds of a very real tragedy, rooted in the disappointed yearnings of no-hopers like unemployed James.

Act Two - not so much a ‘ballet blanc’ but a ballet be-grunged - sees James away with the Sylphs... Scottish Ballet’s dancers make these lost souls - male and female wraiths, all in tattered, grubby white - into a thrillingly prowly ensemble where their existing classical technique totally enhances Bourne’s channeling of Bournonville’s original into his own contemporary vocabulary.

If Sophie Martin’s deliciously minxish Sylph beguiles James away from his high-rise reality, Christopher Harrison has been revealing the guy’s yen to escape drab normality since the start. In 2013, the company shone impressively in their highly-prized Bourne acquisition, this welcome revival reinforces that feeling of ownership - it’s a triumph for Scottish Ballet, a tremendous treat for audiences.