Highland Fling

Highland Fling is a ‘romantic wee ballet’ originally produced in 1994 by Olivier Award winner Matthew Bourne. Read more …

Presented exclusively by Scottish Ballet, Matthew Bourne’s Highland Fling is a wonderfully imaginative reworking of the classic romantic ballet La Sylphide with a wickedly wry Scotch twist.

Highland Fling follows the antics of James – a young Scot with sex and love and rock and roll on his mind. Recently married to his beloved Effie, his addiction to excess finds him in the fateful company of a beguiling gothic fairy. As his love for the strange and beautiful sylph becomes an obsession, he embarks on a fateful journey that takes him from the mean streets and nightclubs of Glasgow into a magical world beyond reality and reason.

The critical consensus

Highland Fling is far from business as usual at our national ballet company, but then that’s kind of the point. If you’re going to appeal to a wide audience, you’ve got to offer a broad repertoire, and that’s exactly what Scottish Ballet is doing.

(*) Kelly Apter, The Scotsman, 29/04/2013

The show has been unofficially dubbed Trainspotting: the Ballet, but that's overstating the case. It's more Sharks and Jets than Sick Boy and Begbie, though there's no denying it's a grittier telling than usual of this story about the perils of falling in love with a sprite when you could be settling down for a quiet life with your fiancee.

(*) Mark Fisher, The Guardian, 29/04/2013

Not only does the ballet feel appropriate to the company in its setting, but as the first major new production of Hampson’s tenure it builds on the work of previous AD Ashley Page, as Bourne applies his unique techniques to the company.

Thom Dibdin, The Stage, 29/04/2013

The optical overload of the first half makes the second seem somewhat dull by comparison; until, that is, Bourne spatters the theatrical canvas with blood in a stunning, and genuinely shocking, warning against human hubris.

(*) Mark Brown, The Telegraph, 29/04/2013

Bourne's choreography draws not only on classical ballet but the storytelling body language of slapstick and mime, bringing his characters spinning off the stage and into our hearts.

(*) Lucy Ribchester, The List, 15/05/2013