This summer, the movie that shot Johnny Depp to Hollywood stardom, Tim Burton's 1990 fantasy "Edward Scissorhands," comes to Japan as a live dance stage created and directed by Matthew Bourne.
Following its November 2005 London premier, a U.K. tour of the production played to full houses and drew countless standing ovations. Bourne's take on the story of an android named Edward, the creation of an old inventor living in a Gothic mansion on top of a hill, looks set to emulate the English director-choreographer's success here with his "Swan Lake," that famously features male-only swans. Bourne's version of that Tchaikovsky ballet has, since its 1995 premier, been credited with no less than "changing the face and feel of dance forever.''
Not mere sci-fi fantasy, "Edward Scissorhands" is a romance and a tragedy, too. When the old inventor dies suddenly, Edward, his incomplete life work who has scissors where his hands should be, comes down to the village at the foot of the hill. There, he is taken in by a housewife called Peg, and slowly becomes popular with her friends due to his special skill at hair-cutting and shaping trees into artistic forms of topiary. But from then on, due to his love for Peg's daughter, Kim, things begin to turn sour. When his novelty has worn off, a small misunderstanding leads to him being chased out of the village. Then, even Kim -- though she loves his pure, kind mind -- tells Edward to return to his own world and live peacefully there on top of the hill.