'The Red Shoes' review — this sumptuous, escapist production is one of Matthew Bourne's finest works to date

Read our review of dance drama The Red Shoes, now in performances at Sadler's Wells to 18 January 2026.

Summary

• Matthew Bourne's dance stage adaptation of movie The Red Shoes returns to Sadler's Wells
• The story sees Victoria Page forced to choose between her art and the man she loves
• Cordelia Braithwaite is radiant in the demanding role of Victoria
• The sumptuous production features wonderful designs by Lez Brotherston

With The Red Shoes (1948), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger set the benchmark for films about ballet, with its surrealist cinematography, lashings of melodrama, and themes of Art, Life, Love, and Sacrifice. The film is so theatrical and brought colour to depressed postwar Britain, and it's given life in one of dance-theatre maestro Matthew Bourne’s finest works to date (first performed in 2016) that showcases his sheer love for the creative process.

It’s the perfect vehicle for Bourne’s witty magpie-like tendencies, with its nods to classical and Diaghilev-era ballet, Hollywood musicals, expressionism, jazz, Victorian melodrama, and music hall. At its centre is young dancer Victoria Page who is torn between her love for composer Julian Craster and her dedication to her art – in the 1940s, it wasn’t possible to have both.

The piece makes huge demands on the dancer playing Victoria (portrayed by Moira Shearer in the film), who is required to dance on pointe, in soft practice shoes and high heels, and barefoot, as well conveying such emotional extremes. The radiant Cordelia Braithwaite, at the performance I attended, is a vision of delicacy and strength who performs the titular ballet-within-a-ballet about a peasant girl who is seduced by a pair of gleaming crimson-coloured slippers with tremendous feeling.

Lez Brotherston’s sumptuous scenography is framed by a rotating proscenium arch that allows us to peek backstage and witness the amount of work that goes on when the audience isn’t around. The company’s prima ballerina (the Joan Crawford-esque Michela Meazza, who also demonstrates a flair for the Argentine tango) marks her steps with her Sylphide costume on its hanger, accompanied her partner (Liam Mower), who would like to have a go at the ballerina role himself. And, at the company’s daily class and rehearsals, various interpersonal dramas play out.

The beach sequence, with its wonderful lightness and The Boy Friend-esque camp, could be a stage work, but this is in fact how these glorious creatures present themselves off duty. There’s some exuberant social dancing at the end-of-season party, followed by a rapturously romantic moonlit pas de deux for secret newlyweds Victoria and Julian, in complementary sailor-style outfits.

As the diffident Julian, Leonardo McCorkindale removes his glasses and is filled with confidence as he imagines being at the helm of an orchestra in a Gene Kelly-esque number that’s a real highlight of the first act. The score, conducted by Benjamin Pope, features a patchwork of works by Hollywood composer Bernard Herrmann (the film’s original score was by Brian Easdale), including selections from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Hangover Square, and Fahrenheit 451, and is lushly all-encompassing.

The controlling impresario Boris Lermontov (Andy Monaghan) is a touch underdeveloped and the second act is a little abrupt. Victoria and Julian are given their marching orders by Lermontov and forced to work on the music halls, where Victoria, who is thrown around like a prop by a pair of acrobats, is tempted to leave her marriage to return to her art, and he is similarly creatively stifled. The bedsit pas de deux is painful to watch with its simmering resentments that come to a head.

Yet The Red Shoes showcases Bourne at his most splendid and satisfyingly emotive. The perfect escapist tearjerker for the festive period.

The Red Shoes is at Sadler's Wells to 18 January 2026. Book The Red Shoes tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Photo credit: The Red Shoes (Photos by Johan Persson)