Billed as an updating and retelling of Irish folk legend, Lord of the Dance is less Erin Go Bragh than Hooray for Hollywood. Michael Flatley, lately of Riverdance, gives us the old razzle-dazzle, fashioning a Celtic-influenced spectacular that wanders faraway from its Riverdance roots. The light-show presentation is closer kin to another contemporary Irish musical group, U2. ...
One of his earliest pieces of choreography, Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker is also one of his most charming and imaginative. Moving the Christmas party from a comfortable middle-class home to a Dickensian orphanage whose proprietors starve their wards to spoil their own children, it then shifts to a wonderland where sweets and sugar are a none-too-subtle metaphor for sexual awakening. In both ...