MATTHEW BOURNE ON ‘THE MIDNIGHT BELL’ - HIS NEWEST FULL-LENGTH DANCE-THEATRE PRODUCTION

Ahead of its first visit to Newcastle Theatre Royal (Tue 8 – Sat 12 Jul) Matthew Bourne talks about his latest work The Midnight Bell, inspired by the writing of the great English novelist, Patrick Hamilton.

Hailed by The Observer as ‘the undisputed king of dance theatre’, master storyteller Bourne has produced some of the most successful dance theatre productions of the last 30 years including Swan Lake, Cinderella, The Red Shoes and Edward Scissorhands.

Photo: Matthew Bourne

When did you first become aware of the work of Patrick Hamilton?

Patrick Hamilton’s most famous works, and the ones that kept him financially secure throughout his life, were actually two very successful plays. “Rope” (1929) and “Gaslight” (1938) and it was through the film versions of these plays that I first became aware of Hamilton as a writer. In fact I toyed with the idea of staging “Rope”, as a play, some years ago, having seen the famous Hitchcock movie. The novels came later for me and they represent a very different world to the plays. I think Hamilton was consciously trying to write something with popular appeal for his theatre work and he succeeded in creating two of the most commercially successful melodramas of their day. However, the novels tell a different story borne out of mostly bitter personal experience and failed relationships. Painfully honest, but also beautifully observed and even finding humour in these mesmerising tales of lonely lives looking for love.

What aspects of his novels appealed to you as a storyteller?

I think initially I just fell in love with these characters and the truthful way that Hamilton gets to the heart of them. Hamilton’s world could be seen as the flip-side of his close contemporary, Noel Coward, whose witty and glamorous world of cocktails and high society was the epitome 1930’s fashion and imagery. Hamilton, on the other hand, wrote about the working man (and woman), borne out of years of observation and social interaction at his favourite location – the rather unglamorous London Pub. The characters are therefore very relatable, and their “voices” ring true. 

“The Midnight Bell” is the name of one of Hamilton’s early novels that went to make up the trilogy entitled “Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky”. However, rather than a straightforward adaptation, this is a devised piece inspired by the world in which Hamilton’s various novels take place; How did you go about this?

I made a devised piece in 2001 called “Play Without Words” which looked at various British movie classics of the 1960’s and from this I created a kind of “mash-up” of stories and characters. I think that I was looking for another fascinating era to apply this very free approach to when I hit on the idea of exploring the very particular world of Patrick Hamilton in the 1930’s. 

The main novels that we have explored in the piece are “Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky” (1929-34), “Hangover Square” (1941), “The Slaves Of Solitude” (1947) and the “Gorse” Trilogy (1952-55), taking characters and situations from all novels and sometimes even suggesting relationships with characters from different novels! The only thing that they all do have in common is that they are all regulars or employees of “The Midnight Bell” pub that gives our show its title.

It was with some trepidation that I have taken the liberty to include a touching gay story amongst our Soho tales. The homosexual “underworld” was not as hidden as you might expect at this time, despite regular police raids of known gay haunts. There is much evidence that gay pick ups and cruising, through a complex series of coded signs and signals, would be a regular occurrence at the very Pubs that Hamilton regularly frequented in Fitzrovia. Indeed, I also unearthed some research in letters that Hamilton wrote in later life that suggested a very liberal and, for the time, uncharacteristically open attitude towards homosexuality. 

Can you tell us something about your collaboration with Terry Davies on the original musical score for this new work?

It’s always exciting to be able to commission a new score from Terry who has written such varied scores for New Adventures in the past such as “Lord Of The Flies”, “Dorian Gray” and his memorable jazz-inspired score for “Play Without Words”. Finding a musical language for a new work is always challenging to begin with and the relationship with a composer is so important as you need to share as much of your vision for the piece as possible so that the musical world can properly come from the chosen source material.

Along with Terry Davies you have also gathered together many of your creative team and even some of the original dancers from “Play Without Words”, your last fully devised piece from 20 years ago!

New Adventures is a family that sticks together! As a team we love creating together and “The Midnight Bell” is set in a period that we have not worked on before. It’s also a very unglamorous, nicotine-stained, fog-bound, slightly seedy world that we are delving into and that is inspiring us all too…. Sometimes it’s finding the beauty in a battered old armchair or the golden fractured light coming through the stained glass of a tavern window that creates a memorable image. 

 These novels were written primarily in the first half of the last century and you have set your piece in the early 1930’s. What does “The Midnight Bell” have to say to the audiences of today?  

One of the reasons that many New Adventures productions can be revived again and again is that they deal in universal and timeless truths. Of course, there is a place for work that directly addresses very contemporary concerns and issues but this work does inevitably date much more quickly. I prefer to make work that finds its relevance through the making of the piece and the people who make it; work that can resonate in a different way many years after its premiere. Its why our Swan Lake is always relevant with its story of a young man looking for love; that story never dates. Its why our Romeo and Juliet will always be relatable to an audience who remember what it was like to fall in love for the first time. 

I originally created this piece as we were slowly emerging from the pandemic, which saw many of us isolated from loved ones and missing that social contact that we so thrive on. Four years on we continue to deal with some of those universal truths of loneliness and the need to connect …  it seems like a trip to “the Midnight Bell” could be the perfect way to spend an evening?

The Midnight Bell plays Newcastle Theatre Royal Tue 8 – Sat 12 Jul 2025. Tickets can be purchased at www.theatreroyal.co.uk or from the Theatre Royal Box Office on 0191 232 7010.