The Most Incredible Thing?

It sounds like it's a good slab of entertainment and ambition but the Pet Shop Boys ballet collaboration with Javier de Frutos is not the most incredible thing - the reviews are in.

Review - The Guardian ***

From first to last, the music comes at a relentless, pop-video pace that leaves too few opportunities for the emotion within the choreography to breathe and develop. Piled on top of that come a barrage of hi-tech stage effects, constantly shifting scenery, and intrusive digital projections.

Individually, some of these effects are ingenious, even extraordinary: the coming to life of the magic clock features some beautiful imagery. Yet by the end of the evening we don't so much feel we've been told a story as blitzed by sound, colour and energy. More like a pop concert, actually, than a ballet.

Review - The Arts Desk

For a first three-act show - which is a huge undertaking for so many first-timers - The Most Incredible Thing is an assemblage of many good ingredients. It’s a ton better than Shoes, thank goodness, though not yet coherent enough to deliver its fairytale without you being extremely aware of the kitchen story - and that means, pace Neil Tennant, the magic isn’t there.

Review: the Telegraph ****

I defy anyone to be bored by this phantasmagorical new collaboration between the Pet Shop Boys and Javier De Frutos. Aptly for this particular tale, synth-pop’s wryest and most enduring exponents and the impish dancer-turned-choreographer have sent creative sparks flying off each other.

The result ... is a treat.

Review: The Independent **

Sometimes things just don't work. Pet Shop Boys have launched themselves into ballet, starting at the deep end with a three-act narrative work. It's an ambitious, sometimes clever project, fatally undermined by waffling choreography.

Review: The Observer

Somewhere in this high-concept deluge, Andersen's poignant tale is lost. As delicate in structure as the paper cutouts with which the writer entertained his friends, and which Lindsay references in her designs, the story illustrates the transformative power of love. Had Tennant and Lowe been creating a musical about the private life of Princess Margaret, or a disco version of the Book of Revelations, the arch, bombastic tone would have been spot on. Here, it is alienating and typical of an essentially narcissistic school of production in which fundamentals of characterisation and story structure are neglected in favour of postmodern hyperstyling. As effect succeeds effect, the lovers (Aaron Sillis and Clemmie Sveaas) remain wholly remote from us, and the vital plot reversal is fudged ... There are compensations...