This year sees Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Red Shoes. Yet, for many fans of the company this will be the first opportunity they’ve had to see this double Olivier award-winning dance show.
When Bourne first announced The Red Shoes, tickets sold-out before its premiere season opened, such was the anticipation for this new work. The show toured again in 2019, but the run was sadly cut short by the 2020 Covid lockdowns. So, this tour feels landmark not just for its decade-long anniversary, but also for the excitement of seeing the production as if for the first time with Ashley Shaw, Dominic North, and Andy Monaghan reprising the principal roles they originated in 2016.
Those unfamiliar with the ballet will likely have some recollection of the story from the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale and Academy award-winning 1948 film starring Moira Shearer. Both versions won legions of fans and Bourne more than nods to this legacy in the cinematic scale of Lez Brotherston’s design, the telling of the fairy tale as a ballet within the ballet, and the nostalgic, post-war setting.
From the opening scene there is a sense of immersion into another world with a proscenium arch drawing us into a silent-movie theatre screen. The arch later revolves to switch the action seamlessly from onstage to backstage, home to theatre. While the ever-surprising set takes us on a journey through a range of other locations from real-world Monte Carlo and Covent Garden to more dream-like black and white sequences reminiscent of Wizard of Oz.
In terms of following a story, the main thread is a simple one – dancer with Ballet Lermontov, Victoria Page (Ashley Shaw) is given red ballet shoes from its impresario Boris Lermontov (Andy Monaghan) who urges her to forgo everything in pursuit of becoming the greatest dancer in the world. Meanwhile her heart is torn when she falls for composer, Julian Craster (Dominic North). The shoes have a life of their own creating an obsessive pull between art and life that eventually dance her to her death. Sound melodramatic? It is. And made all the more so by Terry Davies dramatic score featuring early music of Hollywood composer, Bernard Herrmann, best known for his work on Hitchcock films.
Fans of the film and children’s tale will no doubt be mesmerised by the story all over again, because Bourne has taken all the best bits and injected what the other art forms couldn’t – the real passion of live dance. And what a celebration of dance it is, with so many different styles on show from traditional en-pointe ballet to athletic contemporary split leaps; ballroom to a comical Egyptian walk.
In the programme notes Bourne describes The Red Shoes as ‘A personal love letter to a life spent in theatre and dance’ and that is exactly how it feels to watch. Open your heart and be swept away.
Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures The Red Shoes is at Lowry, Salford from 25 to 29 November 2025. Age Guidance 7+
New Adventures returns to Lowry in June 2026 with The Car Man.