Take A Peek: It’s A Blinder!

It’s been a while since Rambert Dance was the ‘Ballet Rambert’ but, these days, this wonderful company, probably nearer in style to the Northern School of Contemporary dance than it’s ever been, couldn’t be better placed to deliver its mind blowingly good Peaky Blinders The Redemption of Thomas Shelby. Quite simply, tu tu good!

To the utter horror of some interval guests I have never seen TV’s Peaky Blinders, the brutal 1920’s interwar Birmingham gangster drama originally penned by Steven Knight and a veteran of six series.

Now Monsieur Knight and Rambert’s Artistic Director, Frenchman Benoit Swan Pouffer, - who has directed and choreographed this latest offering, quite brilliantly I have to say, have collaborated, along with Birmingham Hippodrome, to create this dance prequel to the TV series, probably in an unintentional bid to drain yet more blood and guts from this now internationally appealing franchise!

And what a bloody and risqué affair it is! There’s a smattering of cross dressing, a one-legged dancer scalping a dead man, sex, drugs and, yes, rock ‘n’ roll: well almost!

The music is from the talented pen of composer Roman Gianarthur. Powerful, heavily rhythmic stuff with beats that descend to your bowels.

But, without the talented band made up of Yaron Engler, James Douglas and The Last Morrell, this might have been a lesser production. Full marks to Pouffer: he made them all step to the front and take a bow. Brilliant and not a sheet of music in sight.

Like the TV series this tells the story of the Shelby brothers only this time it’s all about what happens before the BBC, beginning with the brothers’ return from fighting in the First World War and dovetailing into the love story between Thomas Shelby – danced by the superb Joseph Kudra and the ‘woman with the gun’ Grace, an equally beguiling performance coming from Seren Williams.

Costumed beautifully, danced elegantly and, sometimes not so elegantly, it is a hybrid of Kander and Ebb’s Kit Kat Club from Cabaret and seedy Berlin, with a hint of Di Caprio’s Irish dance scene from the Titanic’s below-deck steerage quarter!

Brutal and at times drug fuelled, it examines violence and the concept that every action, as Newton knew, has an equal and opposite reaction.

Kill someone and someone will kill you back or, at least, someone you love. And that’s exactly what happens. No spoilers there!

Tainted by the violence of the First World War, where men were decorated for brutalising, killing and maiming the enemy, the same individuals were then returned to their homeland and punished for doing the very thing for which they had previously been lionised.

A feast for the eyes, this stage production is energetic, one of the finest displays of contortionism you’ll ever see and full of foreboding, powerful music that leaves you in little doubt as to what’s coming over the horizon.

It has to be one of the most powerful pieces of choreography I have seen in a while and there are few others that I have enjoyed more. Absolutely superb.