Edward Scissorhands (dance)
Encyclopedia
Edward Scissorhands is a dance theatre adaptation of the 1990 American romance
Romance film
Romance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...

 fantasy film
Fantasy film
Fantasy films are films with fantastic themes, usually involving magic, supernatural events, make-believe creatures, or exotic fantasy worlds. The genre is considered to be distinct from science fiction film and horror film, although the genres do overlap...

 Edward Scissorhands
Edward Scissorhands
Edward Scissorhands is a 1990 romantic fantasy film directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp. The film shows the story of an artificial man named Edward, an unfinished creation, who has scissors for hands. Edward is taken in by a suburban family and falls in love with their teenage daughter...

, created by Matthew Bourne
Matthew Bourne
Matthew Bourne OBE is a British classical and contemporary ballet and dance choreographer.-Biography:Matthew Bourne was born in Hackney, London in 1960. He went to William Fitt and Sir George Monoux School in Walthamstow, London...

, with music by Terry Davies. The screenwriter and composer of the film version, Caroline Thompson
Caroline Thompson
Caroline Thompson is an American novelist, screenwriter, film director, and producer. She wrote the screenplays for Tim Burton's films Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Corpse Bride...

 and Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman
Daniel Robert "Danny" Elfman is an American composer, best known for scoring music for television and film. Up until 1995, he was the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band Oingo Boingo, a group he formed in 1976...

, helped to develop the dance version, which is set in the 1950s (the film is set in the late 1980s). The story is told entirely through music and dance with no discourse although the plot is similar to the movie.

The piece debuted in London in 2005 and, despite mixed reviews, has subsequently toured in Britain, Asia, the U.S. (earning a 2007 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience
Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience
The Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience was created to honor those Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, and legitimate not-for-profit theater productions which, due to their unusual nature, cannot be categorized in the regular musical and play categories...

), Australia and Europe. The productions have been put on by Bourne's New Adventures
New Adventures
New Adventures is a British dance company, specialising in contemporary dance. Founded by the choreographer Matthew Bourne in 2002, the company developed from an earlier company Adventures in Motion Pictures, which was later dissolved....

 dance company.

Composition and development

Bourne's all-male 1995 version of Swan Lake has become the longest-running ballet production and earned him the distinction as the first simultaneous winner of the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical
Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical
This is a list of winners and nominations for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical. Prior to 1960, category for direction included plays and musicals.-1950s:Note: this category was for both dramatic and musical productions...

 and the Tony Award for Best Choreography
Tony Award for Best Choreography
-1940s:* 1947: Agnes de Mille – Brigadoon / Michael Kidd – Finian's Rainbow* 1948: Jerome Robbins – High Button Shoes* 1949: Gower Champion – Lend An Ear-1950s:* 1950: Helen Tamiris – Touch and Go* 1951: Michael Kidd – Guys and Dolls...

 at the 53rd Tony Awards
53rd Tony Awards
The 53rd Annual Tony Awards was broadcast by CBS from the Gershwin Theatre on June 6, 1999; "The First Ten" awards ceremony was telecast on PBS television...

 in 1999. In 2002, 2003 and 2005, he earned the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer for My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...

, Play Without Words
Play Without Words
Play Without Words is a 2002 ballet by English choreographer Matthew Bourne with music by Terry Davies. The work is an adaptation of the Joseph Losey film, The Servant after the Robin Maugham novel of the same title.-External links:...

 and Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins (musical)
Mary Poppins is a Walt Disney Theatrical musical based on the similarly titled series of children's books by P. L. Travers and the Disney 1964 film. The West End production opened in December 2004 and received two Olivier Awards, one for Best Actress in a Musical and the other for Best Theatre...

, respectively. Eventually (in 2008), Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

 would begin an article on Bourne with the following summary: "Matthew Bourne is the world's most popular living dance maker."
Bourne was asked by composer friends to brainstorm about films that could be adapted into stage productions in his dance style. Thompson met Bourne in 1997 through Alan Cumming
Alan Cumming
Alan Cumming, OBE is a Scottish stage, television and film actor, singer, writer, director, producer and author. His roles have included the Emcee in Cabaret, Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye, Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler in X2: X-Men United, Mr. Elton in Emma, and Fegan Floop in the Spy Kids trilogy...

 after already having seen Swan Lake. Bourne asked Thompson's consent to adapt the Scissorhands film the following year, but it took another seven years to obtain the necessary funding and get the film's director Tim Burton
Tim Burton
Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...

 and composer Elfman to go along. The work, which Bourne choreographed, was developed as dance theatre instead of as a traditional musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 and has no singing or speaking. The musical score is by Terry Davies, but it includes significant portions of Elfman's film score.

Thompson claims Scissorhands is based on a pet dog of hers. She described her dog as follows: "he was the most soulful, yearning creature I ever met. She wanted to participate in everything. She didn’t need language to communicate. She communicated with her eyes." She described the character as similar to Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The creature is often erroneously referred to as "Frankenstein", but in the novel the creature has no name...

 and Pinocchio
Pinocchio
The Adventures of Pinocchio is a novel for children by Italian author Carlo Collodi, written in Florence. The first half was originally a serial between 1881 and 1883, and then later completed as a book for children in February 1883. It is about the mischievous adventures of Pinocchio , an...

 in the sense that he is "an outsider who wants to be an insider".

Plot

The work "tells the gothic story of a boy, created by an eccentric inventor, trying to adapt to suburban life with only scissors for hands." The dance version is set in the 1950s, unlike the 1990 film, which was set in the late 1980s.

An inventor's son was electrocuted in a dungeon
Dungeon
A dungeon is a room or cell in which prisoners are held, especially underground. Dungeons are generally associated with medieval castles, though their association with torture probably belongs more to the Renaissance period...

-like room while holding scissors. In his grief, the inventor creates another "son" with flashing scissors for hands. The creation is orphaned when unsavory characters frighten his father to death with some Halloween activities. He then ventures from his gothic origins into a suburban town where his loneliness is reinforced until he is taken in by Peg Boggs and adopted by both her family and the town. The town vamp introduces him to sex, which is a highlight of the piece.
In the promotional video for the American debut, Bourne highlights the juxtaposition of the gothic horror setting and the suburban settings of the adaptation. He also notes that San Francisco was a good place for the United States debut of the work in part because as a city it exhibits a tolerance similar to that of the suburbanites in the work. The piece has no spoken words. Like in the film, Edward is equipped with only scissors for hands because his inventor died in the middle of outfitting him. He is discovered in his castle by an Avon lady who brings him into her home. He then wanders into a town where a family takes him in. The theatrical adaptation has a more robust prologue
Prologue
A prologue is an opening to a story that establishes the setting and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. The Greek prologos included the modern meaning of prologue, but was of wider significance...

 than the film, but the additional backstory does not add content to the character.

Productions

The British New Adventures
New Adventures
New Adventures is a British dance company, specialising in contemporary dance. Founded by the choreographer Matthew Bourne in 2002, the company developed from an earlier company Adventures in Motion Pictures, which was later dissolved....

 dance company raised $2 million that was augmented by $780,000 from the Arts Council England
Arts Council England
Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...

 to stage the original production at London's Sadler's Wells Theatre
Sadler's Wells Theatre
Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue located in Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell in the London Borough of Islington. The present day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500 seat main auditorium and the Lilian Baylis Studio, with extensive...

, which opened in November 2005 and closed on February 5, 2006. Eventually, the show was staged in Asia, the United States, Australia and Europe with New Adventures. The dance adaptation featured 30 members of the company. Marc Platt
Marc E. Platt
Marc E. Platt , also credited as Marc Platt, is an American film, television and theatre producer.-Life and career:Platt was raised in Pikesville, Maryland. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979. He was an avid member of the Penn Glee Club during his time at the university...

 was the lead producer.

Sam Archer and Richard Winsor
Richard Winsor
Richard Winsor is a British actor best known for starring as Father Francis in Hollyoaks. He is a trained dancer and has starred in several Matthew Bourne productions. He played 'Dorian' in the sell-out Edinburgh festival and London runs of Dorian Grey and 'Edward' in Bourne's Edward Scissorhands....

 alternated in the main role, wearing a heavily elasticized costume with fiberglass blades and a thick leather forearm brace. They also starred in the following tour, with Archer staying on through the U.S. tour. Regular Bourne collaborators Scott Ambler and Etta Murfitt were associate directors and co-stars. Set and costume design were both by Lez Brotherston in a style described as a sort of Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. Executive producer Cherry serves as Showrunner. Other executive producers since the fourth season include Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W...

 suburbia of mild-mannered characters. His 1950's suburbia sets were inspired by Peggy Sue Got Married
Peggy Sue Got Married
Peggy Sue Got Married is a 1986 American comedy-drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Kathleen Turner as a woman on the verge of a divorce, who finds herself transported back to the days of her senior year in high school...

 and Back to the Future
Back to the Future
Back to the Future is a 1985 American science-fiction adventure film. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, produced by Steven Spielberg, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. The film tells the story of...

. Howard Harrison designed lights and Paul Groothuis
Paul Groothuis
Paul Groothuis is an award-winning sound designer who has had a long and prolific career on the London stage. Groothuis was born in Holland and moved to the UK in 1979 to study Stage Management at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He joined the National Theatre on the South Bank in 1984 and...

 was sound designer.

Following its 11-week London run, it had a United Kingdom tour that lasted for 14 weeks and that was followed by performances in Japan, Korea and the United States, where it ran until Spring 2007. In November and December 2006, it played in San Francisco at the Orpheum Theatre, where it made its American debut with previews on November 11 and 12 and a November 14 opening. In February 2007, it played at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. It spent part of April and May at the 5th Avenue Theatre
5th Avenue Theatre
The 5th Avenue Theatre is a landmark theater building located in Seattle, Washington, USA. It has hosted a variety of theatre productions and motion pictures since it opened in 1926. The building and land is owned by the University of Washington and was once part of the original campus...

 in Seattle. The New York run was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....

. Other venues on the United States tour included Ahmanson Theatre
Ahmanson Theatre
The Ahmanson Theatre is one of the four main venues that comprise the Los Angeles Music Center.Through the generosity of philanthropist Robert H. Ahmanson, construction began on March 9, 1962. The theatre opened on April 12, 1967 with a production of More Stately Mansions starring Ingrid Bergman,...

 in Los Angeles, Belk Theatre in Charlotte, NC, Benedum Center
Benedum Center
The Benedum Center for the Performing Arts is a theater and concert hall located at 719 Liberty Avenue in the Cultural District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...

 in Pittsburgh, PA, Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, PA and Fox Theatre in St. Louis, MO. By the time it played in Brooklyn, it had visited a dozen North American cities.

In May 2008, an Australian national tour was launched at the Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in the Australian city of Sydney. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, finally opening in 1973 after a long gestation starting with his competition-winning design in 1957...

. The piece returned to Europe for a 2008–09 tour that included performances in Britain for the 2008 Christmas season. Venues on the Europe tour included Theatre du Chatelet
Théâtre du Châtelet
The Théâtre du Châtelet is a theatre and opera house, located in the place du Châtelet in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France.One of two theatres built on the site of a châtelet, a small castle or fortress, it was designed by Gabriel Davioud at the request of Baron Haussmann between 1860 and...

 in Paris, Hippodrome Theatre in Birmingham, New Wimbledon Theatre
New Wimbledon Theatre
The New Wimbledon Theatre is situated on The Broadway, Wimbledon, London, in the London Borough of Merton. It is a Grade II listed Edwardian theatre built by the theatre lover and entrepreneur, J B Mullholland. Built on the site of a large house with spacious grounds the theatre was designed by...

 and Sadler's Wells Theatre in London as well as stops in Salford, Athens and Antwerp. Among the cities that it sold out are New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sydney, Melbourne and Paris.

Reception

The dance adaptation received mixed reviews. The earliest review of the London production by The New York Times in November 2005 said that like the film version, "doomed love story remains bittersweet". Matt Wolf of The New York Times panned the original run with statements such as "a potential dance sensation seems peculiarly short on actual dance" and "But a dream ballet late in the first act and various set pieces later seem, in terms of actual choreography, oddly pro forma for Bourne. . ." He felt that overcoming the obstacle of choreographing dances around a lead with blades for fingers was too much to overcome. A fellow critic from The New York Times described it as "visually alluring" two weeks later. On its Christmas 2008 return to England, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

 gave the show a positive review: "Matthew Bourne’s adaptation of Tim Burton’s 1990 film is one of the biggest and brightest of this season’s glut of cultural ornaments. Indeed, so much skill has been lavished on this dance-theatre show for Bourne’s company, New Adventures, that it almost feels churlish to withhold my affections." The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

s reviewer was critical, saying "Edward is more kids' cartoon than satire, with two-dimensional characters that stand a hair's breadth from cliché". Another critic from The Independent opened her review as follows: "The best part of Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands is the curtain call." However, contemporaneous reviews by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

 were a bit more positive saying that "Bourne is a natural storyteller, who never leaves his audience behind".

The work's American debut in San Francisco drew mixed reviews. Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle described it as a high point in his "Theatre Year in Review top 10", saying it was "invigoratingly choreographed and beguilingly designed". However, when analyzing the year from the entire Arts and culture perspective the Steven Winn (also with the San Francisco Chronicle) described the work as lacking, noting that its November run "fell well short of this show's [Swan Lake]'s inspired high mark" from March in the arts and culture year end top 10. Hurwitt stated at the beginning of the San Francisco run that "Where Bourne triumphs, with considerable help from Davies, Thompson and Brotherston, is in replicating Burton's delicately bittersweet whimsy in a manner uniquely his own."

Johnny Depp attended the December 30, 2006 show danced by Archer and signed a souvenir program for Bourne with the following partial inscription: "Trembled on the verge of tears, mate." At the time of its off-Broadway debut, The New York Times described it as not "so much a dance enhanced by a famous story as a drama condensed by the removal of words." It was further panned in a more detailed review the following week by The New York Times Jennifer Dunning, who said "Mr. Bourne's "Edward Scissorhands" is mostly a candy-coated bore." In Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

, he was praised for the uniqueness of his dancing hedges.

Awards and nominations

The work received a nomination for the 2007 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography
-1970s:* 1970: Ron Field – Applause** No nominees* 1971: Michael Bennett – Follies and Donald Saddler – No, No, Nanette** No nominees* 1972: Patricia Birch – Grease and Jean Erdman – Two Gentlemen of Verona...

 (for Bourne) and won the 2007 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience
Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience
The Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience was created to honor those Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, and legitimate not-for-profit theater productions which, due to their unusual nature, cannot be categorized in the regular musical and play categories...

. Bourne was also nominated for Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography that year for Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins (musical)
Mary Poppins is a Walt Disney Theatrical musical based on the similarly titled series of children's books by P. L. Travers and the Disney 1964 film. The West End production opened in December 2004 and received two Olivier Awards, one for Best Actress in a Musical and the other for Best Theatre...

.
Award Outcome
2007 Drama Desk Awards
Unique Theatrical Experience
Outstanding Choreography: Matthew Bourne
Matthew Bourne
Matthew Bourne OBE is a British classical and contemporary ballet and dance choreographer.-Biography:Matthew Bourne was born in Hackney, London in 1960. He went to William Fitt and Sir George Monoux School in Walthamstow, London...


External links

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