Dance: Fairytale ending

First nights are always nerve-wracking occasions when an audience's reaction determines the likely success of a production. But Adventures in Motion Pictures' Matthew Bourne makes dramatic use of this valuable feedback

"I'm never going to criticise a first night again," vowed Matthew Bourne. We were sat in the deserted bar of the Piccadilly Theatre a few weeks into Adventures in Motion Pictures' four month run of his wartime Cinderella and he was giving me the background to the official opening night on 7 October. It seems that what we saw at the celebrity-stuffed premiere was not the finished article but a work in progress.

When Bourne saw the piece in front of an audience for the first time during the week of previews he became horribly aware of some major problems with the scenario: "Suddenly you put the whole thing on stage and you see these glaring gaps in it." In Bourne's original prologue, the stepmother shoots the first wife: "It was a very dramatic beginning but nobody understood it. We had Cinderella's mother lying on the ground - one shoe on, one shoe off - and a lot of people thought that was Cinderella and that the story was going to be told in flashback so when Cinderella came on people didn't know who she was." Having realised that punters were hitting the bar in the first interval without a clue what was going on, Bourne proceeded to work on the treatment. Lynn Seymour (who created the role of the stepmother) was not best pleased when her big murder scene was dropped, but Bourne knew at once that he had made the right decision: "Day One when we did it, you felt the audience relax." The fine sanding that Bourne has given the production has allowed it to relax into its long run. Anyone who saw Swan Lake when it opened at Sadler's Wells in 1995 and its triumphant arrival in the West End 12 months later will know that Bourne is no stranger to fine-tuning his work - "I'd almost be embarrassed to look at the original version now."

A longer version of this interview appears in `Dance Theatre Journal' out next week (0181-694 9620). The latest issue includes an internet interview with Steve Paxton.

`Cinderella' continues at the Piccadilly Theatre until 14 February 1998 (0171-369 1734)