04.26.07
Edward Scissorhands: A musical play without words
Anyone who has ever been the “weird kid” or felt out of place in a community probably has some affinity for the works of Tim Burton, and most especially for his 1990 film Edward Scissorhands, a sweet, melancholy fable about a gentle but undeniably freakish creature who attempts to live in a “normal” suburban world. I’ll readily allow to being one of those people; Edward Scissorhands resonated powerfully with it when I first saw it as a young adult, with the scars of adolescent wounds still visible on my psyche and the struggle of figuring out how to fit my goth-geek yearnings into the “grownup” world in full force. Time and maturity have made me more critical of it, but no less fond. And so when Matthew Bourne’s adaptation of it to stage and dance came along–and most particularly with the recommendation of Rachel E. Pollock, a theatrical artisan whose opinions, both professional and personal, I regard highly–I knew that I (and my equally goth-geeky husband) needed to see it. We did so last night, as a celebration of our second wedding anniversary. It was an ideal way for us to celebrate.
(What follows can be spoilery if you’re unfamiliar with the film.)
Many people I know were surprised to find out that this production is a ballet and not a typical West End/Broadway style musical with big sweeping treacly ballads and rousing group songs, and at least a few were turned off by that. Frankly, I’d have found that style much more off-putting. Edward, while not silent, doesn’t speak much; he doesn’t really know how to talk to others, and his expressions of his emotions and desires are largely physical. Thus, turning his story into ballet, where all the action and emotion is expressed through physical movement, seems ideal to me. I needed no dialogue or story-songs to understand what was going on; the dancing conveyed everything beautifully. And it is, for the most part, beautiful dancing.
The numbers involving Edward and Kim, the perfect blond daughter of the family that takes him in and who he falls hopelessly for, are all sparkling with tenderness and emotion, most particularly the sequence in which the photos of Kim in her cheerleader outfit (the first glimpse Edward gets of her) come to life and dance him to sleep. I’ve rarely seen the delighted joy of first infatuation conveyed with such giddy sweetness. And the fantasy topiary ballet is a thing of sheer genius, both in emotion and in technical achievement. The group numbers can be unwieldy and sometimes do rather go on, but they are great fun to watch; it’s particularly illustrative to pay attention what’s happening around the edges, where little pieces of character and motivation are subtly dropped in with bits of business involving one or two characters outside of the central group dancing. The Christmas party sequence particularly delighted me, both for the sheer fun of the dancing and for how many individual things of import were going on amidst the fun–just like a real party.
I think the highest praise I can give this production is that it manages to be both faithful in the most important ways to its source, and a standout creation of its own. It doesn’t feel like a Burton film transplanted to the stage; it’s more generous to the so-called “normal” characters than Burton was, yet maintains the sense of Edward’s isolation and yearning to be accepted and the sweet melancholy, along with just enough flavor of Burton’s signature visual style to honor him without being slavish. Something that really stood out to me here, and wasn’t conveyed as skilfully in the film, is the way that absolutely good and well-meaning people can nonetheless, and in all innocence, turn the “freaks” into benign circus attractions. The good people of Hope Springs do their best, for the most part, to accept Edward, even to finding a use for his strange disability, and yet they never quite get past being fascinated by what’s different about him, rather than by who he is. The generosity granted to the “normal” characters in this production is what helps play up this contrast so piquantly, and what makes Kim’s attraction to Edward so poignant–she’s the only one who does see him for who he is.There are some changes to the story, some of them certainly understandable for the restrictions of the stage and a story told all in dance, and some of them a little less so. The version here of Edward’s origins is less clear and somewhat less touching than it is in the film, and the opening sequence feels rushed. The event that causes the townspeople to turn against Edward is also kind of rushed and jumbled, and doesn’t carry quite the punch that it should. And due to the sheer number of characters, we often don’t get as much clarity in their motivations as would be nice, particularly the Bible-thumping Evercreeches; we see their objections (and their attractions) to Edward, but their reasons (aside from some rather lazy, knee-jerk Christian references) are muddled and a bit confusing.
Some of the changes, however, are brilliant, and exactly what make this production stand as its own creature and not a slavish reproduction. Making the setting definitively 1950s adds to the “long ago and far away” fable-like quality, along with really sharply outlining the contrast between “normal” and “freak” (and how narrow those definitions can be, when some of the kids are clearly telegraphed in 1950s “juvie” costume and attitudes). Edward’s adventures as a hairdresser are still important to the story, but less drawn-out and fetishized than in the film; this compactness helps emphasize how Edward’s place in the community is strictly tied to what he can offer them. And the general sense of kindness given to all the characters helps make all of the actions more keenly felt and not as simplistic as they can sometimes be in the film. It’s very, very easy to hate Jim in the film. It’s not quite as simple in this production, which deepened the melancholy for me.
And the things that were kept–including sections of Danny Elfman’s score for the places where their emotional impact matters most, and the ice angel, and the final scene between Edward and Kim even though it’s a pas de deux and not dialogue–are exactly the things that should have been kept. They’re Bourne and his collaborators acknowledging what in the film worked perfectly and honoring the inspiration that gave. Adapting something that already exists and is already beloved is a big challenge, and some adapters react to that by throwing away critical elements to put their own stamp on the work. Bourne realized he didn’t need to do that here, and it’s part of what makes the entire production so lovely.
Visually and technically, there’s not a thing about this that I could complain about. The stagecraft is ingenious, conveying scope and emotion and tone without relying heavily on massive set pieces; the scene changes are swift and compact, and the set contains just what it needs to get the point across. The use of scrims and lighting (and judicious placement of snow machines) is also ingenious, and I spent a fair amount of time marveling at how much wonder can still be achieved by such technically simple means even in this age of CGI. The costuming and craftsmanship is gorgeous; Edward, of course, is a marvel, as are the topiary dancers, but even the more “normal” costumes are not just pretty to look at but contain bits of character in them, such as the Grubbs all in matching, vaguely tacky prints, and the perfectly doll-like Cissy Monroe, and Mrs. Upchurch who has color-coordinated gloves for everything, even her bathing costume.
I have no fault with the performers, either. It’s somewhat difficult to give names for this performance, as the cast is comparatively small for the number of roles contained and nearly everyone doubles up and trades off on characters, so I’m not always certain who played which role in the performance we saw or if I’ve gotten the names right. I believe Sam Archer was Edward for this performance; while he lacks the heartbreaking sense of fragility that Johnny Depp gave Edward in the film, he beautifully communicates the confusion and yearning, as well as a sense of resolve that the film’s Edward didn’t always show. Kim in the film has always been its biggest weakness for me, underwritten and further straitened by Winona Ryder’s oddly flat, screechy performance; here, however, she is much more sympathetic and believable, particularly in her interactions with Jim. Michela Meazza as Joyce is brilliant, weirdly malevolent even within the context of being one of the story’s villains; there’s something insectlike about her movement and performance, the sense of a praying mantis searching for a mate (and of course we all know what female mantises do to their mates). And I found myself with a real soft spot for Shelby Williams as Marilyn-Ann Evercreech; she’s like a Wednesday Addams that nobody ever listened to, and her almost offhand yearnings for Edward, despite knowing how wrong they are, are both funny and a little pathetic. The rest of the cast was excellent, fine dancers and comedians all, but these were the standouts for me.
For both of us, the performance ended with a perfectly-placed fall of snow and honestly-earned tears. Everything that we valued in the story was there, and many things that added enormously to it were there as well. We couldn’t have asked for more.