Patricia took me to Edward Scissorhands at Sadlers Wells the other night. It was not as good as Bourne's Highland Fling, but I still enjoyed it. As you can see from the picture, it looks a lot like the movie.

We sat in the first row, which meant a good view of the orchestra. There were three keyboards, which covered such effects as organ music and clocks ticking. And there were three marimba/vibraphone type instruments as well. We had to look up to see the dancers, and as in Highland Fling, there was a lot to see, with subsets of dancers doing different things at any one time.

I remember two things from the movie: the trampy housewife and the ice-sculpting. The trampy ballerina is very good, as are all the suburban send-up pieces (and the cheerleader's mother). I was not so keen on the ice-sculpting moment this time, partly because the statue was simply plastic, and partly because the cheerleader-heroine just did not do it for me. However, the topiary-pruning scenes were good, and the high point is an actual dance-of-the-topiaries. The dancers are completely covered in green, and some have cubic heads or butts. It is witty, and you have pity for their restricted vision and heaving sides.

At half-time I was conscious that I had to keep my end of the conversation up, given that P could have gone with a woman friend, any woman friend, who would have been more fun to gossip to about the performance. In fact P had hinted that I may not be worthy of her tickets to a forthcoming performance of the godlike Carlos Acosta. I tried to channel Edward Gorey, since I know he loved ballet. Actually, P led off saying that she did not like the heroine, and that one of the other dancers, playing a tom-boy, would have been better. Oh, did she mean the totally hot one in the blue lace-up swimsuit? Yes, she did, and didn't that dancer have a nice body? Talk about common ground! This I could talk about. There was indeed something about the way the dancer undulated, and her impish face, that made me pine for my lither days. And I did think that some of the other dancing was impressive, they way it obviously took strength, though was lightly done. Edward couldn't really do much what with the scissors and all, but he did once hold the girl by her neck. P muttered that it was graceless.

The second part was quite short. The ending did its very best to be moving, going so far as to have a blizzard of snow fall on the audience at the end (blobs of foam stuck to my glasses), but it just barely failed to pluck at my heart-strings. Oh, well. During the blizzard I turned back to look at it falling on the audience, and that plucked at my heart-stings, all those beautifully-dressed women having a great time. We exchanged smiles with the cute conductor, and P leaned over and complemented the brass on their playing, and on sitting next to such a pretty flautist. The young gentlemen looked very flattered, and I remarked as much to P, who said, "Oh, I figure I'm approaching the age where I can say these things and not be scary."

Amazingly enough, Griffin's school class is going to see this ballet, so we kept quiet about the surprises.

Paul wrote: One of the vibraphone/marimba things was probably a variant on a midi kat which definitely falls into the "when I have a 17 room house and one of them is full of gratuitous musical equipment, I will have one" category. They are cool! I enjoy the somewhat new light-weight but a tad lecherous but not in a harmful way writing style, btw.

Madeleine wrote: Next time I'll fly over just so P doesn't have to waste her tickets on you! No plucking of heart strings, shame on you.