In December, Mr Pharmacist and I went to see Edward Scissorhands at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, which is a dance stage. I am a big fan of Tim Burton and an even bigger fan of Danny Elfman, who composed the score to this and many other movies.

I enjoy seeing a remaking of a film on stage, be it as a dance show or as a play, as I am always curious as to how they solve the set issues, which is something I’ll write about in more detail in my report of Rain Man. Does it lose its grandness? Does the story suffer? And in the case of a dance show, can you translate the story without any words? As my favourite version of Romeo & Juliet is the ballet version, I’m already a convert to the last point. Film making in itself relies so much on non-verbal imagery as well, as facial expressions and movements are integral to the story, and this is very true in the case of Edward Scissorhands.

The principal dancer, whose name I can’t seem to find on the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, was very convincing as the awkward and confused Edward, who tries so hard and cannot help but get it all wrong. Kim, the “Winona Ryder” character, was less convincing. She was a fabulous dancer, but her character came across as quite bland. A bigger problem was that I didn’t really feel the connection between them. To be fair, it has been a very long time since I last saw the movie, but tell me this – is Edward supposed to come across as obsessed with her to a degree that makes him seem like a creepy stalker? The way he approaches her is to be frank a bit creepy. As for her, she is clearly into her boyfriend, but runs to Edward as a crutch when the boyfriend appears to be a jerk. Up until that point, she barely seems curious about Edward. It doesn’t really scream True Love to me, even if she seems to still be loving him as an old, lonely lady.

But this is not as much the fault of the dancers as it is the choreography, which didn’t really convince me. But the performences of the dancers and orchestra were really good, and they seemed to have a lot of fun with it. I should also mention that there were a lot of really young kids in the audience, one of which were sitting next to us and asking her mother questions all the time, like for example “Why aren’t they talking?” and “what’s happening? Who is she?”. She kept cracking me up.

Maybe I shouldn’t over analyze what was clearly intended to be a light, family show (and it completely works as that), I just wish the connection between the two was more firmly based. In the first scene they have together, Edward suddenly has normal hands and they’re dancing around with, err, dancing topiaries. I read that as being his fantasy, and not something that really happened. Mostly because of the dancing topiaries and non-scissor hands.

But despite all this, I had a very enjoyable time, and recognise that my expectations were probably a bit too high.And I can’t really blame the lead dancer for not being Winona Ryder, which is probably really my problem if I’m being honest with myself.