Author: Charles Hutchinson

Dominic North in New Adventures’ 2025 production of Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell, on tour at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Johan Persson

NEW Adventures return to York Theatre Royal from Wednesday to Saturday with Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell.

Last staged in York in October 2021, this award-winning work is on a 17-week tour from May 15, also visiting the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, from September 30 to October 4.

Inspired by the novels of Patrick Hamilton, such as Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky and Hangover Square, The Midnight Bell is set in 1930s’ London, where ordinary people emerge from cheap boarding houses nightly to pour out their passions, hopes and dreams in the pubs and fog-bound streets of Soho and Fitzrovia.

Step inside The Midnight Bell, a tavern where one particular lonely-hearts club gather to play out their lovelorn affairs of the heart in bitter comedies of longing, frustration, betrayal and redemption. 

Bourne says of his 14-strong cast: “This is, without doubt, the finest company of quintessential New Adventures actor/dancers ever assembled for a single production. Together they represent nearly 30 years of critically acclaimed performances and created roles in my work.

“In fact, it would be hard to imagine a cast more perfectly suited to the challenging world of Patrick Hamilton and his exploration of the darker reaches of the human heart.”

“I’ve been lucky with injuries and not really looking my age,” says New Adventures dancer Dominic North, aged 42

Reece Causton, Glenn Graham, Daisy May Kemp, Andy Monaghan, Liam Mower, Bryony  Pennington and National Dance Awards Outstanding Female Modern Performance winner Michela Meazza return from the original cast. 

Making their Midnight Bell debuts alongside them are “some of New Adventures’ most beloved stars of the last 25 years”, Cordelia Braithwaite, Dominic North, Edwin Ray, Danny Reubens, Ashley Shaw and Alan Vincent, joined by rising star Hannah Kremer, last seen as Juliet in Romeo And Juliet.

Guiseley-born Dominic North, a stalwart member of Bourne’s company for 22 years, is undertaking his first new New Adventures role in “ten years, maybe eight, definitely a while”, playing Bob, the bartender.

“I took it for granted that knowing shows I could count the music, but I’d only seen The Midnight Bell a couple of times, and it was nice to have that adrenaline feeling, thinking ‘what is this?’? It was like being new again with loads of old friends around me.”

The Midnight Bell finds 42-year-old Dominic performing in a New Adventures tour of mid-scale theatres for the first time in 13 years, after taking on such parts as Edward in Edward Scissorhands on and off over a decade.

“I think it’s the multiple lead stories, not just one story, that make The Midnight Bell such a hit with audiences. Everyone in the ensemble has their story to show what they can do, and that makes it exciting and dramatic,” he says, as he looks forward to his debut York Theatre Royal appearance in a career that has taken him to Japan at least seven times, Korea, five, Australia and the United States too.

“It’s such a cool show with so much intricateness and cleverness, and I’m just glad I’ve got to do it. In particular I love the lip-synching to the amazing songs, which gives the show comic relief.”

He has special memories of his lead role in Edward Scissorhands. “I first did it at the age of 24 at the Sydney Opera House. I’d probably be nervous to first do it now, but back then you’re young and naive, going to Japan for four months and Korea for a month, whereas now I’d be petrified!”

Working with Bourne for more than two decades has stretched him “massively”. “I think when I started I was very much a dancer-dancer; I didn’t see myself as an actor, but when I understudied The Prince in Swan Lake at 22 , I had to learn on the job very quickly,” says Dominic, who took his first steps at NYDZA dance classes at Bingley railway station four days week until the age of 18 before attending the Central School of Speech and Drama.

“You realise it’s not just about dance, but helping the audience to understand what they’re seeing through the storytelling in the dancing.”

Dominic is based in London with his young family – he has two daughters – but still has a flat in Guiseley and family in Menston and Horsforth too. He is in fine fettle at 42. “I’ve been lucky with injuries and not really looking my age and still being able to play diverse roles on stage,” he says.

“It helps that this company is good at seeking to sustain careers, and that’s a shift in the dance world from ten years ago. There are dancers in this cast who are in their 50s, and when I did Edward Scissorhands, we had dancers in their 40s and 50s too.

“It’s nice to reflect the different ages, rather than putting 20-year-olds in wigs and facial hair, as we’ve realised that experience is key to our performances and doing our job.”

He loves performing in Bourne’s works for New Adventures. “It’s so rewarding,” says Dominic. “We’re lucky that we’re so loved; everywhere we sell out. We’re so fortunate that we can tour around the globe, because there’s no language barrier with dance, but we never take our following for granted.

“Working with Matthew is a dream, getting to work with him closely on creating new roles. He gets things out of you that would never imagine to be possible, and he does it in a very modest way. He couldn’t be further from how directors are depicted in films.”

New Adventures in Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell, York Theatre Royal, June 4, 7.30pm; June 5, 2pm, 7.30pm; June 6, 6pm and 7.30pm; June 7, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Age guidance: 14 plus. Content warning: Scenes of a sexual nature, including sexual violence and mental distress, smoking on stage (e-cigarettes), haze and flickering lights (not strobe). 

Here Sir Matthew Bourne discusses The Midnight Bell, novelist Patrick Hamilton, working with composer Terry Davies and the universal truths of loneliness

Choreographer and director Sir Matthew Bourne. Picture: Hugo Glendinning

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

“His 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, born 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 1930s’ fashion and imagery.

“Hamilton, on the other hand, wrote about the working man (and woman), born 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.

“For many years, I have held the belief that dance can tackle, in depth, unconventional and complex relationships, rather than the standard boy/girl romances that dance often favours, and these characters and stories require us to ‘dig deep’ and find a non-verbal language to do them justice.

“You can learn so much about 1930s’ attitudes to sex and relationships through Hamilton’s novels and I must admit that much of it was revelatory and unexpected.

“Hamilton has been called ‘a connoisseur of alcoholic behaviour’ and this aspect appeals greatly to me as a non-verbal storyteller as it suggests ‘altered states’ and even ‘gin-soaked’ fantasies that are particularly useful when exploring the inner life of a character.

The poster artwork for the New Adventures tour of Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell

“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 creative process?

“I made a devised piece in 2001 called Play Without Words, which looked at various British movie classics of the 1960s, such as The Servant and Look Back In Anger amongst many others. From this I created a kind of ‘mash-up’ of stories and characters from different movies that dealt with changing attitudes to class and culture of that time.

“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 1930s.

“The main novels that we have explored in the piece are Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky (1929-1934), Hangover Square (1941), The Slaves Of Solitude (1947) and the Gorse Trilogy (1952-1955), taking characters and situations from all the novels and sometimes even suggesting relationships with characters from different novels!

“So, as you will see, we weave six interconnecting stories or relationships throughout the piece, without telling the full story of each novel, but rather creating a kind of ‘essence’ of Hamilton’s world. 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.

“As I said earlier, much of Hamilton’s work was deeply personal and became the source from which he created his finest and most individual work, so 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.”

How did you collaborate with Terry Davies on the original musical score for The Midnight Bell?

“It’s always exciting to be able to commission a 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.

A scene from the 2021 tour of Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell that visited York Theatre Royal. Picture: Johan Persson

“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.

“However, the first thing that I said to Terry was that I didn’t want a 1930s’ ‘pastiche’ score. I wanted a contemporary score that reflected the emotion and inner life of the characters, the themes of loneliness, furtive relationships, erotic obsession, drunken oblivion and bittersweet longing.

“Terry also loved the Hamilton books and our work together has been driven by a desire to be true to the atmosphere of the novels and characters.  We have, though, added the odd period ‘surprise’ in our score that reflects the words and music that our characters may have been listening to at that time.”

Alongside Terry Davies, you have also gathered 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. How come?

“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. It’s certainly a gift for Lez Brotherston (set and costumes) and Paule Constable (lighting design) to be able to revel in such a richly atmospheric world that swiftly changes location and mood whilst keeping six different scenarios going!

“This is certainly a totally collaborative project and I was thrilled to have such an incredibly generous and talented cast to create with, including some dancers who have been with me for over 20 years, along with some of our brightest young talent.

“This is a piece where they need all their skills as non-verbal storytellers and where the acting is as important as their formidable movement skills.”

Hamilton’s novels were written primarily in the first half of the last century and you have set your piece in the early 1930s. 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. It’s why our Swan Lake is always relevant with its story of a young man looking for love; that story never dates. It’s 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?”

* IN Conversation With Matthew Bourne will follow the 7.30pm performance on June 6, facilitated by York Theatre Royal chief executive Paul Crewes, with BSL Interpreted and Audio Described services provided.