"Edward Scissorhands" Ballet Comes to Australia

The acclaimed ballet version of Tim Burton's classic film Edward Scissorhands is coming to Australia. The ballet, brought to the stage by British choreographer Matthew Bourne, was already a big hit when it made its debut in Britain in 2005, and was a celebrated success in the United States, as well.

At the tour launch at the Sydney Opera House on January 29th, 2008, Bourne said that he had wanted to adapt Burton's cult classic since the early 1990s, when he emerged as Britain's most exciting new choreographer.

However, it took nearly a decade to obtain the rights and get Tim Burton, co-writer Caroline Thompson, composer Danny Elfman, and 20th Century-Fox to permit the ballet adaptation.

"I think if I'd asked them for permission to make a TV series or a theme park ride, they would have said no," Bourne said.

"But what intrigued them was the peculiar form of theater I do, which is storytelling without words."

After eight years of waiting, the show was allowed.

Matthew Malthouse as Edward Scissorhands

Bourne said in Sydney that he was initially concerned with the scissors.

"Although they are not obviously actual blades, they move quite fast and you could get injured by them," he said.

"We've had nothing major happen, but the blades do break sometimes or they snap off."

“In a way Edward Scissorhands is Tim Burton,” Bourne observed. Bourne got the mother of Helena Bonham Carter to persuade the director into seeing one of his productions.

But Bourne was most nervous on how the star of the original film version, Johnny Depp, would think of the production, as he was the one who brought Edward to life on screens in 1990. After many months, Depp finally caught the show when it arrived in Los Angeles.

Bourne recalled: “He spent an hour with the company and tried on the hands. He wrote to me afterwards and said he was ‘teetering on the edge of tears all the way through it, mate’.”

The Australian tour of the ballet will commence at His Majesty’s Theatre from July 1 to 6.

You can see a video preview of the Sydney show here.