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Corruption, celebrity and confidence

Lloyd Evans

Wednesday, 30th July 2008

Lloyd Evans talks to Matthew Bourne about his new ballet Dorian Gray and co-directing Oliver!

We discuss other projects, a film for Channel 4, a new production of Cinderella for Christmas 2009. ‘Has anyone from the Olympics been in touch?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Anything planned?’ ‘No,’ he says tersely. I nudge him a little and he admits, ‘I was very excited when we got the Olympics and then I felt a bit betrayed that the arts were going to lose out and there were all these companies folding and being closed down.’ But he seems to dislike negative thinking and he switches tack. ‘I hope the whole thing will engender a massive amount of interest in the arts. Other people who’ve had the Olympics have said it was a huge boost. But, for me, putting on a big spectacular just feels like a load of hassle. I like stories. I’m a story-teller. And there’s something about what I do now that was always there. But it took a long meandering path to get to this point.’

He grew up in Walthamstow, east London, and even as a child he was performing sketch-shows with school-friends. ‘I was always the one who did it, directed it in a sense, choreographed it, and it was all copied from things on TV. Just self-taught.’ His family loved popular theatre but had no knowledge of dance. ‘We didn’t have any classical music in the house. We liked Fred Astaire and a lot of eccentric people on TV. We had family favourites, certain people we loved, Max Wall, Beryl Reid, Ralph Richardson, these were all the people I grew up loving through my parents. We had a great time.’

As a star-struck teenager he used to visit the West End to catch a glimpse of celebrities and collect autographs. Once he spotted a frail, beautifully dressed old man being trundled out of the Savoy in a wheelchair. Bourne politely asked for his signature. It was Charlie Chaplin.