Midnight Bell will take audiences at the Lowry to the pub

When did you first become aware of the work of Patrick Hamilton?

Patrick Hamilton’s most famous works, and the ones that kept him financially secure throughout his life, were actually two very successful plays Rope and Gaslight and “Gaslight” (1938) and it was through the film versions of these plays that I first became aware of Hamilton as a writer.

In fact I toyed with the idea of staging “Rope”, as a play, some years ago, having seen the famous Hitchcock movie. The novels came later for me and they represent a very different world to the plays.

Matthew Bourne's Midnight Bell (Picture: Johan Persson)I think Hamilton was consciously trying to write something with popular appeal for his theatre work and he succeeded in creating two of the most commercially successful melodramas of their day. However, the novels tell a different story borne out of mostly bitter personal experience and failed relationships. Painfully honest, but also beautifully observed and even finding humour in these mesmerising tales of lonely lives looking for love.

Matthew Bourne (Picture: Hugo Glendinning)What aspects of his novels appealed to you as a storyteller?

I think initially I just fell in love with these characters and the truthful way that Hamilton gets to the heart of them.

Hamilton wrote about the working man (and woman), borne out of years of observation and social interaction at his favourite location – the rather unglamorous London pub. The characters are therefore very relatable, and their “voices” ring true.

For many years I have held the belief that dance can tackle, in-depth, unconventional and complex relationships rather than the standard boy/girl romances that dance often favours and these characters and stories require us to “dig-deep” and find a non-verbal language to do them justice.

You can learn so much about 1930s’ attitudes to sex and relationships through Hamilton’s novels and I must admit that much of it was revelatory and unexpected.

The Midnight Bell is the name of one of Hamilton’s early novels. However, rather than a straightforward adaptation, this is a devised piece inspired by the world in which Hamilton’s various novels take place; how did you go about this?

I made a devised piece in 2001 called Play Without Words which looked at various British movie classics of the 1960s. From this I created a kind of “mash-up” of stories and characters from different movies that dealt with changing attitudes to class and culture of that time. I think that I was looking for another fascinating era to apply this very free approach to when I hit on the idea of exploring the very particular world of Patrick Hamilton in the 1930s.

Matthew Bourne's Midnight Bell (Picture: Johan Persson)

So, as you will see, we weave six interconnecting stories or relationships throughout the piece, without telling the full story of each novel, but rather creating a kind of “essence” of Hamilton’s world. The only thing that they all do have in common is that they are all regulars or employees of The Midnight Bell pub that gives our show its title.

You have also gathered together many of your creative team and even some of the original dancers from Play Without Words, your last fully devised piece from 20 years ago!

New Adventures is a family that sticks together! As a team we love creating together and The Midnight Bell is set in a period that we have not worked on before.

It’s also a very unglamorous, nicotine-stained, fog-bound, slightly seedy world that we are delving into and that is inspiring us all too…. Sometimes it’s finding the beauty in a battered old armchair or the golden fractured light coming through the stained glass of a tavern window that creates a memorable image.

Matthew Bourne's Midnight Bell (Picture: Johan Persson)These novels were written primarily in the first half of the last century and you have set your piece in the early 1930’s. What does The Midnight Bell have to say to the audiences of today?

One of the reasons that many New Adventures productions can be revived again and again is that they deal in universal and timeless truths. Of course, there is a place for work that directly addresses very contemporary concerns and issues but this work does inevitably date much more quickly.

I prefer to make work that finds its relevance through the making of the piece and the people who make it; work that can resonate in a different way many years after its premiere. It’s why our Swan Lake is always relevant with its story of a young man looking for love; that story never dates. It’s why our Romeo and Juliet will always be relatable to an audience who remember what it was like to fall in love for the first time.

I originally created this piece as we were slowly emerging from the pandemic, which saw many of us isolated from loved ones and missing that social contact that we so thrive on. Four years on we continue to deal with some of those universal truths of loneliness and the need to connect … it seems like a trip to the Midnight Bell could be the perfect way to spend an evening.

Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell is at The Lowry, Salford from Tuesday, July 1 to Saturday, July 6. Details from www.thelowry.com