Tanguera, Sadler’s Wells, London, review: It’s a bright, slick production

Tango tells its own stories. It’s a fiercely dramatic style, highlighting shifts of power and mood between two dancers. By framing it with a conventional love story, the Argentinian tango musical Tanguera dilutes that intensity. It’s a bright, slick production, all broad strokes and familiar dilemmas.

Created in 2002 by producer Diego Romay, with choreography by Mora Godoy, Tanguera has been a big hit at home in Buenos Aires and internationally. Arranged by Lisandro Adrover and Gerardo Gardelin, the music is a mix of traditional tango, played by an onstage band, with forays into musical theatre style, particularly in the numbers for singer Marianella.

The plot looks back to the early days of tango. Our heroine, Giselle, is a naive immigrant arriving at the docks of Buenos Aires, where she immediately falls in love with heroic dock worker Lorenzo, but is lured into an underworld of prostitution by the criminal Gaudencio.

The storytelling is clear but clichéd. You can tell where Giselle is in her story by her colour-coded costumes: innocent white for her arrival, red for her time as a tango dancer and sex worker, then black with white underskirts as she plans to escape with Lorenzo. There’s little space for complexity.

Melody Celatti has speedy footwork and a fearless way with lifts, but Giselle’s drama feels laid on top of Godoy’s spectacular show tango choreography, rather than emerging through it. The same is true for the men in her life. Both Dabel Zanabria’s imposing Gaudencio and Esteban Martín Domenichini’s Lorenzo partner strongly and move with precision, but their efficient dancing doesn’t dig into these characters.

The action moves swiftly from the docks to the backstreets and the cabaret, in spare designs by Valeria Ambrosio. The cabaret scenes are the splashiest, but also the thinnest: the girls pose and flap feather boas, vamping it up. It’s hard to see why Giselle becomes a star when she has to spend so much time registering outraged virtue.

Curiously, the best dancing happens in the incidental numbers. Freed from the plot, the supporting dancers can focus on tango itself. As the Madam of the brothel, Carla Chimento shows vulnerability and ambition through her steps: each deep lunge or line of flashing footwork looks like a choice. It’s by far the most revealing dancing in Tanguera, perhaps because it doesn’t try to be.