Grace and Force

[alobear]

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a Matthew Bourne ballet - and this year, it was Edward Scissorhands. It comes in third in the rankings of the five I've now seen - after Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, but ahead of Cinderella and The Nutcracker. It fell somewhat into the "too much storytelling, not enough impressive dancing" category, and was a lot lighter and sillier than I was expecting, but I enjoyed it overall. One of the major strengths of Bourne ballets is that every member of the corps gets a character and they all play them to the hilt, which makes for a great deal of variety on stage, and this was certainly present here. It was all very cleverly staged, and the whole troupe dance numbers were energetic and entertaining. There were only two scenes that I really loved, though - both between Edward and the love interest, and that's where most of the really good dancing took place, as well as being the most emotive scenes in the story. The dancing topiary were particularly good, especially since I couldn't tell how they could see!


I also finished the next Jack Reacher book this weekend - The Affair. It told the story of Reacher's last assignment for the army, and explained the real reason why he left, which was interesting. It also involved him buying his first ever folding toothbrush, which was awesome. The plot was intricate, I didn't work it out before him for once, and the "spectacular" female character had some interesting depth to her. The ending was rather shocking, though - I mean, I know Reacher isn't above doing what needs to be done, but I think this one took that a bit far...