My friend Troy rang me up Saturday morning. He had an extra ticket to Matthew Bourne’s interpretation of Edward Scissorhands at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I met him at BAM, we trudged the slushy streets to brunch, and then settled in to what was a pleasant but somewhat underwhelming performance of one of my favorite stories.
The performance was very much wedded to the movie, even using Danny Elfman’s haunting soundtrack. The major characters were all recognizable, especially the nympho neighbor with her red red hair, and some were a bit queerer, like her pretty boy son who reminded me of the gay character Christian from the movie Clueless. Johnny Depp made the character of Edward, and the dancer who portrayed him stuck with Johnny’s mannerisms and choices making me wonder if there were any other way that character could be played.
There are no speaking parts in this performance, a simple screen with projected words (productions love screens and projection these days! they also used it to depict snow later on) used early on to introduce the story. In the movie, Edward never speaks, and so muting all the characters diminished the effect of his muteness.
One thing present in the story that a dance ensemble was able to underscore was the nuclear family structure of the suburban neighborhood Edward finds himself in. The symmetry of mother father son daughter and the subsequent pairings of sons and daughters as siblings and then couples with the children of other families made for interesting recombinant duos. It was also interesting to note how variations from this four person family model disrupted the community: clearly Edward’s sudden adoption by one of the main families, but also the one family with a third child, an infant, who keeps getting tossed around from mother to father to son to daughter and back. This family is also portrayed as a bit trashier than the other, the father with his beer and wife beater, the mother with her perpetual curlers and nightgown.
I guess the one obvious translation into the medium of dance that struck me was the evolution of Edward in relation to movement. He begins awkward, with little or no recognizable dance of his own. As he’s introduced to the suburban community he begins to learn the dance moves they enact on a daily basis–this is especially evident toward the end at the Christmas Formal as he watches from the sidelines and copies the elaborate steps of the group couple number before breaking in to dance with his love interest much to the chagrin of her jock boyfriend. And there are times the community learns Edward’s moves once he discovers he has moves–sometimes in a mocking way, sometimes, as in the “meet and greet Edward” picnic, in an eager-to-learn-new-moves-from-this-stranger, this “other” among us kind of way.
Overall the story tended to wander during the long, big group dance numbers leaving you to wonder where your focus should reside. It also was a bit more “family-friendly” than the movie, much of its darkness and sadness downplayed or revised (such as the death of the jock boyfriend–he’s merely wounded in this version). To a child whose imagination thrived on dark stories, it makes me wonder about the double standard of allowing kids to see gratuitous violence and sex, but when it comes to a necessary violence or darkness rooted in the paradoxical nature of human complexity, one central to a classic narrative, we shield them.
Some highlights: the bizarre seduction scene between the nympho neighbor and Edward that leads to her riding a washing machine; the clergy family all dressed in black with their goth-looking, suicidal Wednesday Addams-esque daughter wanting Edward to slit her wrists, and leather jacket punk son causing mischief (and a great scene where the mother becomes a cross which the minister father shoulders and carries off stage); and a slight queer undertone the some of the male teenagers, showing some of the many cracks in the pre-fabricated notion of “normal” suburban family-centered America. Some of those first born sons won’t be getting married and making nuclear families of their own.
Cheesiest moment: the end, after everyone bows and then Edward wanders onto stage, oblivious to the audience, only to then become aware and thank us by making it “snow” out over the seats (big cannons up in the lighting spray fake snow out over us). The audience seemed to love it, especially the families with kids…