Edward with the Scissors for Hands @ 5th Ave

Ok, we're going to do the classic oddball story. He's a weirdo, he doesn't fit in. People love that shit. Everyone thinks they're the weirdo. This guy we'll give some strange skill, some kind of physical deformity. Whatever, we'll give him fucking scissors for hands or something.

Add two of Hollywood's legit oddballs J. Depp and T. Burton and a classic in the key of goth was born in 1990. Everyone loves Edward Scissorhands.

It's Ed Scissorhands, live, in the theater. Big light show, big effects, huge sets. Wait! We'll sing it. No, wait! We'll dance it!

Add Matthew Bourne, the guy who did the "gay Swan Lake" and you have 5th Avenue's latest. Edward Scissorhands the Dance Mix contains not a word of dialog and it turns out that, yes, you can dance the story of E. Scissorhands and bring it off reasonably well. Bourne is a storyteller's choreographer, so it makes sense, and this story's suburban gothic aesthetic gives a lot of opportunities to 5th Ave's huge sensory-overload theater and the big-time sets. The moon is suitably gigantic, the tract homes are built with just enough perspective problems to achieve a not-quite-pastoral effect, and in front of all that is Edward in the patchwork catsuit and claws scaled for the stage dancing with a bunch of humanoid hedges. This show bounds along in that vein, bouncing between big 1950s suburban BBQ sockhops with the whole cast on stage to scenes in the graveyard or the Frankenstein lab where Edward was born with just him and a love interest dancing a mournful duet. Finally, late in the second act when a drunken Edward is owning the floor at a Christmas dance and he's spinning around all blades and hormones you can't help but cringe, for Edward and for everyone. Someone's about to get messed up. You've seen the movie.

After the cut is a Youtube video of a previous production of the same show.