Rambert Dance’s Peaky Blinders is an exhilarating spectacle — review

For a while it seemed as if Rambert was going to stick to a textbook combination of late-20th-century modern and new commissions, but Benoit Swan Pouffer, artistic director since 2018, has taken a sudden lurch into dance theatre with a national tour of Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby (opening at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre). Powerfully danced, sharply suited and blessed with a piledriving score, the result is an exhilarating two-hour spectacle.

The cult BBC TV series, six seasons in all, tracks the fortunes of the Shelby brothers. Having survived the hell of the first world war trenches, they make their way home to Birmingham minus any semblance of moral compass and embark on a life of organised crime. The show’s gleefully anachronistic soundtrack spawned a music festival in 2019 which included a 12-minute dance sequence by Rambert that inspired the current production.

The scenario, devised by the story’s creator Steven Knight, is part-prequel, part-mash-up, focusing on our anti-hero’s love affair with Grace Burgess and his despair at her murder. Recognising that not everyone in the audience will have binge-watched the box set, there is a (taped) narrative voiceover by performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah, street preacher in the series, who helpfully name-checks the members of the Shelby gang.

Moi Tran’s standing set cuts a huge rectangular moat around the central performance space — a bit like an elephant enclosure. This is especially useful for the opening scenes of trench warfare but is also an ideal means of getting dancers on and off, as is Natasha Chivers’s lighting, which allows characters to manifest from the gloom with magical ease. Richard Gellar’s costumes suggest the period but aren’t slaves to it. The Blinders’ caps have the requisite twinkle of razorblades in their brims. Aunt Polly sports asymmetric plaids — imagine a riding habit designed by Alexander McQueen.

Pouffer is most at home with ensembles and Rambert’s dancers spin and kick and roll with tireless energy and verve, storming down the gangways to terrorise the audience. There is a deranged Charleston for the nightclub orgy (cue: blond hoochie-coochie dancer with full beard), a spectral vision scene in an opium den and a vicious punch-up fuelled by the pogo pulse of Wire’s “12 XU” and timed to perfection by fight director and veteran stunt man Adrian Derrick-Palmer. There are anguished solos for Thomas Shelby — Guillaume Quéau on whistle-worthy form (if the excitable front stalls were any guide) — and Naya Lovell is a sleek, sinuous Grace, though Pouffer’s pairwork isn’t strong or distinctive enough to convince us of the love story that supposedly spins the plot.

Matthew Bourne would have made us care more and Mark Bruce would have delivered gothic sleaze on a fraction of the budget, but it is still a rattling ride. Energy levels are maintained by the score, a dazzling playlist of Blinders favourites — notably Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” — knitted together by composer Roman GianArthur and played live upstage by James Douglas, The Last Morrell and musical director Yaron Engler, a regular Hofesh Shechter collaborator whose virtuoso percussion will recalibrate your pulse.

★★★★☆

At the Troubadour to November 6, then touring to May 27 2023, peakyblindersdance.com