The dancers play an absolute blinder in this show, on now at Wales Millennium Centre – as you’d expect from the masters at Rambert.
But you’ll get a lot more than courageous and captivating choreography in this theatrical reimagining of a Peaky Blinders prequel.
There’s a live band booming it out on stage, so you’ll get the excitement of being at a rock concert. With storytelling, scenery, lighting and costume that would grace any West End stage, you’ll also get a theatrical extravaganza.
Trust me when I tell you, you’ll be wowed by Rambert Dance’s Peaky Blinders.
Inspiration for setting the hit Birmingham gangster drama to dance began back in 2019 when Benoit Swan Pouffer, choreographer and artistic director at the iconic Rambert dance company, created a dance piece for the first Peaky Blinders festival in 2019. Peaky creator and writer Steven Knight was bowled over. Hence his decision to work with Pouffer to include a Swan Lake scene in series five – and next step was this masterpiece on stage.
Backed by a menacing, threatening and sometime melancholic musical score by Roman Gianarthur, along with songs by Radiohead, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes, the show sets all your senses alight.
From curtain up we’re we’re immediately bombarded with brutality as the Shelby brothers endure the horrors of the First World War – dancing bodies twitching in agony, madness and driven on by determination.
From the trenches, it’s on to their violent post-war rise in the Black Country where gang violence prevails. Narration from poet Benjamin Zephaniah ensures we can follow the plot as we’re taken from the grime of a factory to a day at the races and a hedonistic nightclub. Powerful, jerking moves are juxtaposed with fantastic flow; it’s remarkable how the performers veer so effortlessly from violence to sheer elegance as the plot moves on to the love story between Tommy and Grace.
ACT 2
Act 2 takes us on the downward spiral of Tommy as he succumbs to opium. In dreamlike scenes, the dancers move and angle their bodies into positions that left me wondering if there had to be invisible props keeping them upright. And the fight scenes? Incredible! How on earth they manage to steer clear of injury I’ll never know.
An exciting, awe-inspiring and emotionally moving night that will create new fans of both dance and Peaky Blinders. Form an orderly queue….
It’s on at Wales Millennium Centre until 25 March. Book here