Just a week after Birmingham Royal Ballet delivered a new ballet based on the music of Black Sabbath comes this second revival of Kate Prince’s dance theatre production based on new arrangements of Sting’s music and named after one of his most popular songs. As I regained consciousness from sleep on the morning after this show, I found myself involuntarily singing “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” amongst a medley of other memorable passages from a plethora of his hit songs. Be warned, it’s the kind of show that takes over your unconscious mind, indelibly imprinting these lyrics and melodies for days afterwards.
Sting’s prolific output is well represented with no less than 27 songs in the mix (one, Fields of Barley, is repeated in each act sung respectively by the composer and Beverley Knight). Although many of the numbers are sung by Sting, important contrast is struck by several guest vocalists: in addition to Knight, Lynval Golding, Claudia Georgette, Shaneeka Simon and Christella Litras are featured. All the numbers have been re-recorded by their composer in new arrangements by Alex Lacamoire (of Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen fame) and the name of the band that performed many of the original hit songs is therefore conspicuously absent from the show’s credits.
The energy bursting from the extraordinary dance skills of this outstanding ensemble (ZooNation:The Kate Prince Company) was possibly enough to power the underground cavern that is the Peacock Theatre (the stage and orchestra stalls are so deep underground that the Piccadilly line runs just underneath, and the squeaking of the trains has been attributed to a theatre ghost)! In terms of styling, this was hip-hop and contemporary dance theatre presented in highly refined choreography with a classical tint. B-boy power moves were mixed with speedy multiple pirouettes and flashing fouettés. It proves to be an intoxicating cocktail.
The fictional narrative concerns a family in a rural community known as Bebko in an unnamed country beset by civil war. The idyllic simple lives of the father (Nestor Garcia), Mother (Anna Holmström) and three children, Leto (Lukas McFarlane), Tana (Natasha Gooden) and Mati (Deavion Brown) are overtaken by conflict and the family is forced to flee as refugees and are separated. I confess that some aspects of individual detail are hard to follow, even after multiple viewings, but that is certainly because the mind is arrested by the richness of setting, choreography, music and dance performance. Somehow the narrative detail doesn’t seem to matter in amongst all this excellence.
The siblings end up in anonymous countries known as Greenland (Tana), Blueland (Mati) and Redland (Leto). They suffer arrest, indignity and abuse – a meaningful use of the song, Don’t Stand So Close To Me – but along the way they also find love and only one of the three is a heterosexual romance. The duet between Brown and former New Adventures dancer, Harrison Dowzell (well-remembered as Romeo in an earlier iteration of Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet) to Shape of My Heart was quite charming.
Garcia’s breaking skills were let loose in two impressive solos, one in each act. The Mexican b-boy must have made a similarly arresting impression on the musician since you can catch him in Sting’s If It’s Love music video from 2021. Hannah Sandilands, an original cast member, returns – alongside her long-time mentor, McFarlane – to partner the irrepressibly bubbly Gooden; and Nafisah Baba, former BBC Young Dancer (from 2017), was another cast returnee, reprising her role as Roxanne (cue great song of that name), the Redland partner of Leto. Her duet with McFarlane is a great mix of two TV dance show champions since the latter won Sky TV’s Got to Dance, way back in 2013 when he was just 17. McFarlane, by the way, has also joined two other great stalwarts of the TV dance competition genre, Tommy Franzen and Lizzie Gough (remember BBC’s So You Think You Can Dance?) as Kate Prince’s Associate Choreographers. With so much talent on board, it's not surprising that the choreography is vibrant, eclectic, and consistently excellent. At the end of the performance – in typical street dance style – the 14 performers (tapped from a season-long squad of 19) were let loose to blitz the audience with their own hip-hop party tricks.
The overall quality of the production is greatly enhanced by the sum of all the parts including a simple, multi-functional set design by Ben Stokes (that with minor adjustment can be a village, a prison camp, or a sea crossing) aided by strong and effective lighting by Natasha Chivers.
The show is now bound for a worldwide tour, taking in Sydney, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, USA and Canada (finishing in May 2024), and this Message in A Bottle will surely travel well. Oh no, now I’m singing it again!
