Corruption, celebrity and confidence

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

Matthew Bourne is a whirlwind. He’s a dynamo, a powerhouse, a force of nature. He has created the busiest ballet company on earth and turned Britain into the world’s leading exporter of dance theatre. His breakthrough came in 1995 with an all-male production of Swan Lake which won awards in London, New York and Los Angeles. Since then he has updated the Nutcracker, re-imagined Carmen as The Car Man, and created a dance version of Edward Scissorhands, which has toured more or less constantly since opening in 2006. But in person the whirlwind is remarkably unruffled.

He’s a tall, quietly spoken 48-year-old with a lean, unlined face and small sensitive features. We meet at his office in Sadler’s Wells to discuss his latest project, a ballet based on Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray. I ask how he handled the problem of making a portrait grow old on stage.