Dance review: Jekyll & Hyde

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This is only on for a week so I don't think the press have been in yet.

The only reason I knew the Old Vic has a history of presenting dance was that the upper circle is named after Lilian Baylis, who also has one of Sadler's Wells' dance stages named after her. It's a connection new Artistic Director Matthew Warchus said he wanted to bring back in his first season, and he does so by giving a platform to Drew McOnie, the choreographer behind the breathtaking moves of In The Heights, and his own company. It's a high profile that could, and on this evidence should, send McOnie on the road to being the next Matthew Bourne - his Jekyll & Hyde has the dangerous sexiness of Bourne's career-making Swan Lake. McOnie and composer Grant Olding adapt Robert Louis Stevenson's novella, and don't make the mistake of trying to stick to it too closely (the story's too famous for its own good; its whole structure builds to a huge twist that everyone already knows.)

Dance review: Play Without Words

Matthew Bourne's Play Without Words, which he first produced at the National ten years ago, gets revived for a tour to mark the 25th anniversary of Bourne's New Adventures company. Set in 1965, with a jazzy, trumpet-heavy score by Terry Davies, the show is based on Robin Maugham's The Servant and Joseph Losey's film version. Bourne's dance retelling of a story of multiple infidelities uses up to three dancers at a time to play each character: Anthony (Adam Maskell, Chris Trenfield, Richard Winsor) initially resists the temptation of housemaid Sheila (Anabel Kutay, Hannah Vassallo) but eventually succumbs, only to be caught by his manservant Prentice (Daniel Collins, Alastair Postlethwaite, Neil Westmoreland.) Prentice blackmails his boss with the information, but Anthony's fiancée Glenda (Madelaine Brennan, Saranne Curtin, Anjali Mehra) is herself cheating with a mystery man.