AWARDS

OLIVIER AWARDS
Best Entertainment
Best Theatre Choreographer
(also nominated for Best Director, Best Design, Best Lighting Design)

NATIONAL DANCE AWARDS
Best Choreography

NEW YORK DRAMA DESK AWARDS
Nominated for 5 awards including Unique Theatrical Experience

LOS ANGELES DRAMA CRITICS AWARD
Best Choreography

Nominated for SOUTH BANK SHOW AWARD

PRESS QUOTES 2002/03

"A groovily shagtastic and blazingly original show … Matthew Bourne’s Play Without Words is an absolute cracker- funny, sexy, sinister, nostalgic, brilliantly stylish."
The Daily Telegraph, 2002

"Play Without Words is a breakthrough in Bourne’s career and a major event in British Theatre"
FT, 2002

"A period piece that is skewed, pointed and darkened with a wickedly contemporary imagination"
The Guardian, 2002

Bourne’s delectable soufflé was in the National for just a month and must surely have a much longer shelf life than that. Let’s hope some enterprising management takes this cross-culture piece on tour and on a return visit. I’ll see it again"
Dance Expression, 2002

"The impact of Play Without Words is all in the body language, and it shows that Bourne’s Adventures in Motion Pictures is still leading him into new theatrical territory"
The Mail on Sunday, 2002

"His brevity, light touch and carefully controlled buffoonery roll the action along, the whole infinitely more than the sum of its many parts"
Sunday Express, 2002

"A vibrant, wicked satire of class conflict and sexual desire set in Swinging Sixties London and told exclusively through movement and music"
The Times, 2002

"Not remotely stuck up or ‘arty’, Bourne’s scenario brilliantly designed by Les Brotherston… is both a culturally revisiting and a new way forward"
Daily Mail, 2002

"The movement is loaded with intent and ambiguity, so that you never really notice any balletic extremities, the performers skills are battened down into the seductive meaning of a show that will delight and surprise you"
Daily Mail, 2002

"Composer Terry Davies has also written his slick, atmospheric jazz score exactly to suit Bourne’s needs, and the link between dance and music never slackens"
The Guardian, 2002

"The correspondence with Terry Davies’s commissioned score – which has all the cool of early 1960’s European jazz – is dazzling"
FT, 2002

"You won’t want to avert your eyes from the stage in case you miss one tantalising second. There’s currently no sexier, more exhilarating narrative drama"
Sunday Express, 2003

"A brilliant piece of dance-theatre"
Sunday Times, 2003

"The infallible Lez Brotherston’s set is a triumph"
Sunday Times, 2003

"An evening of brilliant theatre. There is nothing else quite like this show, and I thoroughly recommend it to your ‘must see’ list"
Daily Mail, 2003

"The cast, full of Bourne regulars, is magnificent. The period detail is superb. Stylish, witty and very moving"
Independent, 2003

"Terry Davies’ jazz score is quite superb"
Daily Telegraph, 2003

"A triumph"
Mail on Sunday, 2003

"Occupying a beguiling twilight between dance and drama, this is a fabulously well observed homage to one of the most original and challenging periods in British film making"
Midweek, 2003

"Bourne’s dance actors are superb in every nuance of body language. As a playgoer, I follow them in complete suspense; as a dance goer, I love the physical texture and rhythm they bring"
Financial Times, 2003

"The whole production is redolent of 1960's atmosphere, thanks largely to Terry Davies’ jazz-style score and the disconcertingly spot-on designs by the peerless Lez Brotherston. Imagine Jimmy Porter, Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies, the young Albert Finney and the Round the Horne gang all wandering into the film of The Servant, and you begin to get the world of Play Without Words"
Financial Times, 2003

PRESS QUOTES - 2005

‘Bourne has raised the dance bar once again’
The Arts Report (LA)

‘Nobody does it better’
LA Times

‘Matthew Bourne is England’s most exciting and innovative choreographer.’
Curtain Up

‘Matthew Bourne, the wonderfully imaginative and witty choreographer‘
The Wall Street Journal

‘Dance without category’
The Wall Street Journal

'Play Without Words is a visual playground'
The New York Sun

'Bourne knows how to put on \ wickedly entertaining show'
Time Out, New York

Bourne's 'Play Without Words is without compare'
Gay City News (NY)

Click here for further review quotes at the National Theatre website