Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty is a beautiful production, a visual and audio treat from the first glimpse of the show’s programme, with its sumptuous red roses cover design, to the colours, textures and glorious sounds of the production. Velvet-clad fairies dance in front of a giant white moon, sunshine dazzles a garden party of happy dancers and the rich red tones of a masked wedding ball vividly bring the visuals together in the closing scenes.

The story is a classic, originally written by Perrault in 1697, it was brought to greater attention in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm in a tale called ‘Little Briar Rose’ and filmed by Walt Disney in 1959. The Tchaikovsky ballet dates from 1890, though Matthew Bourne has made some clever contemporary twists to the tale – well, it wouldn’t be a classic Christmas Bourne without it! The production is also very contemporary in its humour, with everything from slapstick to subtle - from the hilarious baby princess climbing up the drapes to the urban hipster tourists with the digital cameras outside the overgrown palace grounds in 2011, as the princess is due to wake up. (Conveniently starting the story in 1890, the year of the ballet’s premiere, brings Bourne right up to date, with the princess falling asleep on her 21st coming of age birthday, waking up 100 years later.)

Funny, moving, thrilling, dark, exciting, happy, dramatic, spectacular, but above all, beautiful, Matthew Bourne’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ should be marked a ‘must-see’ on everyone’s calendar before January 26.

Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty is at Sadler’s Wells London until January 26