A smash hit sell-out when it surfaced for a three-week run last year, Matthew Bourne's Play Without Words is back for an extended season - so there's really no excuse for not catching it this time round.
On one level, it's a slick and sophisticated masterclass in stagecraft, with Bourne pulling off no mean trick by splitting his central characters into three. Yes, it's a dramatic device, but it's so subtly done that the action seems to echo round the stage, the emotions of the key players refracted like light through a prism.
But Play Without Words is more than just a devilishly clever choreographic exercise. Based on Joseph Losey's classic movie version of The Servant, Bourne has conjured up a timeless period piece where the ingenuity of the staging (Lez Brotherston's set is a brilliant evocation of 1960s London) is matched by the power of the emotional undertow tugging at its heart.
Charting the eddying power struggle between upper-class Anthony, his manservant Prenctice and Glenda, the fiancèe who disrupts the delicate balance at play, Bourne fills the stage with dark desires and suppressed emotions. The pyjama-clad eroticism of Act Two will snap the drawstrings of your heart.
And Bourne's hard work is carried aloft every step of the way by a superb cast, drawn from his regular collaborators, who more than prove the old adage that actions really do speak louder than words.
Play Without Words
