ASPHODEL MEADOWS / THE TWO PIGEONS at Covent Garden

Second theatre trip - second Royal Ballet!  What can I say - I like their ice-cream.

We saw another of their mixed programmes which, as I have said before, certainly allows the company to show their versatility in contrasting productions: this time it was Liam Scarlett's 2010 debut ballet for the company ASPHODEL MEADOWS paired with Sir Frederick Ashton's lyrical 1961 production of La Fontaine's THE TWO PIGEONS.

ASPHODEL MEADOWS was Liam Scarlett's first ballet choreographed for the Royal Ballet in 2010, the company that he trained with as a teenager.  The ballet is only 25 minutes but it's concentrated energy is quite hypnotic added to the tension in the score by early 20th century French composer Francis Poulenc.  Within a company of 20 dancers, the main focus is three sets of couples who all have a moment to shine in differing pas de deux.

In Greek mythology the Asphodel Meadow was where the souls of ordinary citizens went after death and there certainly was an endless tension in Liam Scarlett's choreography of couples locked in an endless dance.  It's a production I would be very interested to see again. 

It was paired with Ashton's charming but slight THE TWO PIGEONS which we first saw in 2015.  A painter is losing his patience with his young girlfriend's unwillingness to stay still while he tries to paint her in his Parisian roof-top garret.  Things aren't helped when her friends appear, closely followed by a troupe of passing gypsies.  The painter is captivated by a fiery gypsy dancer and he follows her to their encampment, leaving his girlfriend alone.  However the gypsy leader turns on the painter and humiliates him, finally chasing him out of the camp.  The two lovers are reunited in the attic, their love personified by two pigeons who settle near them.

Based on an original ballet from 1912, Frederick Ashton choreographed a shorter version which premiered, appropriately, on Valentine's Day 1961.  It's all a bit generic - inconstant lover, spirited girl, flashy but hard-hearted gypsies - but oddly enough, when the two sad lovers are reunited and the audience's attention is riveted to the two live pigeons on stage, the piece wins you over.

Restaged again by Christopher Carr, the thin characters were vibrantly danced by Vadim Muntagirov and Lauren Cuthbertson as the lovers and Laura Morera as the passionate but fickle gypsy girl.  The late Jacques Dupont's original scenic design still charms.

It was a very enjoyable evening of two uplifting ballets, I am sure there will be more mixed programmes in the coming months...

MAYERLING at Covent Garden: McRae's back... and firing on all cylanders

He's back,, and the Royal Ballet's still got him!   After ten months away from the stage recovering from an injury, Steven McRae,the most charismatic of Royal Ballet male stars, is back and dancing up a storm!  However as one returns so another is up on bricks: Edward Watson who was due to dance the role of the tortured Crown Prince Rudolf for some performances in this revival has had to limp away injured.  I hope he recovers quickly.

Kenneth MacMillan's brooding masterpiece is now 40 years old but has lost none of it's power to unsettle - luckily there are two intervals for you to exhale after the pressure-cooker atmosphere his choreography engenders.  The bleakness of the tale of Crown Prince Rudolf and his teenage mistress Mary Vetsera casts a strange, disturbing atmosphere.

Rudolf was a death-obsessed womanizer addicted to morphine and addled with syphilis. His politically expedient marriage to Princess Stephanie of Belgium left both miserable but his wish to separate was refused by his parents Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elizabeth which was jaw-dropping hypocrisy as they both had lovers and lived separate lives.

Countess Marie Larisch, a former mistress and one of his mother's ladies-in-waiting, knew Mary Vetsera's mother and, as they both wanted advancement at court, they affected an introduction between the 30 year-old Prince and 17 year-old Mary, who was obsessed with him.  After a secret three month affair, he invited her to the royal hunting lodge of Mayerling.  Mary probably knew why - she left a letter saying they were going together into an uncertain beyond - but the result was two dead bodies and a revolver.

MacMillan's ballet begins and ends with Vetsera's secret, moonlit burial in a monastery cemetery - in real-life a ghoulish affair where her corpse was driven in a carriage to the site, wedged between her two uncles with a broomstick pushed down the back of her coat and a hat covering the bullet wound in the back of her head.  Her uncertain beyond was to be written out of history initially while Rudolf was mourned supposedly dying of a heart rupture.  But eventually their dangerous liaison was revealed...

Thankfully Kenneth MacMillan wasn't in the mood to make Rudolf and Mary tragic victims of a devastating love or a cruel world who refused them happiness as in the film versions of the story; all the characters in his ballet are presented with a clear-eyed realism which makes it hard to sympathize with them but you remain riveted as the lovers pirouette closer to their abyss.

Steven McRae was remarkable as the narcissistic Rudolf, seeming to dance at times to crazed music playing in his own head, emanating an icy disdain for all around him seemingly not connecting with anyone, you suspect that for McRae's Rudolf even Vetsera was simply a means to an end.

Akane Takada danced the role of Mary and did so with a technical precision but I never felt any particular heat from her, the last time I saw it Lauren Cuthbertson danced the role and had been violently passionate.  Meaghan Grace Hinkis was a suitably scared Princess Stephanie and there was the usual very good work from Kristen McNally as the Empress Elizabeth and Laura Morera as the scheming Countess Marie Larisch. 

It's a ballet where the best roles are the women's but Luca Acri was very good as Bratfisch, Rudolf's coach-driver, who has a great solo in the tavern scene which he repeats for the doomed couple in the final scene but falters and stops when he realizes nothing can distract them from their deadly solipsism.

The revival is again staged by Christopher Saunders, Grant Coyle and Karl Burnett and the late Nicholas Georgiades set designs are still wonderfully evocative. However it's the presence of MacMillan that pervades the whole production, for both his artistic and choreographic brilliance and the sadder thought that it was during a 1992 revival of MAYERLING that he collapsed and died alone backstage at Covent Garden from a heart attack.

ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND at Covent Garden - The Wonder of Wheeldon

It's four months since we last saw the Royal Ballet company at Covent Garden - yes, we saw LA BAYADERE in August but that was the Marinsky company so it was a welcome joy to be back in the Amphitheatre, pushing past the throng to get to our front row seats to Christopher Wheeldon's acclaimed version of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND.

I will admit to some trepidation going in as the last time I saw a theatrical production based on Lewis Carroll's evergreen children's story was the truly ghastly WONDER.LAND at the National Theatre, one of the most hideous experiences I have ever had in a theatre - click here to see my blog lynching here - but I really need not have worried.  Christopher Wheeldon's inventive choreography dazzled where WONDER.LAND embarrassed, the set invoked real wonder where WONDER.LAND just created clunking ugliness and Nicholas Wright adaptation managed to evoke the surreal atmosphere of Wonderland that Fiona Buffini's buffooonity didn't.

Christopher Wheeldon's ballet of ALICE premiered in 2011 to great success - which was probably matched by a collective sigh of relief from the Royal Ballet as, amazingly, it was that company's first full-length original work in 16 years.  Joby Talbot's score was also the first original ballet score for the company in 25 years - so as you cans see, a lot was riding on this production.  Wheeldon and Talbot have since rejigged the original two-act structure to a more traditional three-act form with added choreography for Alice and her romantic hero, the Knave of Hearts.

I was also vaguely dreading the 12am start matinee, expecting an auditorium crammed with whingeing Jeremy and Jemimas but they were all on their best behaviour and any worries were soon carried off by Talbot's exhilarating score and Wheeldon's inventive and witty choreography - he is a real story-teller in dance as was shown a few years later with his wonderful version of THE WINTER'S TALE.

A major reason for the production's success is Bob Crowley's outlandish but always on-the-money set and costume designs which again fill the stage with colour but always stay true to Nicholas Wright's version of the tale.  Crowley's design fills the stage with invention and the sheer joy of visual story-telling: his Cheshire Cat looms large over with limbs that fly away to reform as the cat moves around - and his tail has a life of it's own, snaking around Alice keeping her in her place, while the Caterpillar is a sinuous Indian dancer with a retinue of dancers following behind him on point.

Crowley's costumes also hit the right witty note, from the crazed dandy of The Mad Hatter to the eye-popping red of the Queen of Hearts' outfit - I also liked the idea of her being transported everywhere in a heart-shaped cabinet by minions which, when finally opened revealed a quaking King of Hearts at her feet!  Alice's topsy-turvy adventure is also brought to vivid life by Natasha Katz's lighting and the video projections of Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington which instantly conjures up a world of vertiginous rabbit holes and halls of endless doors.

Nicholas Wright establishes a framing device which ends with a neat twist: Alice and her sisters are being read to by Lewis Carroll at a garden party, she then dances with her friend Jack, a young gardener, but her imperious mother castigates him for having a red rose in a bunch of white ones.  Jack gives Alice the offending rose and she gives him a jam tart from the party spread but her mother suspects he stole it and dismisses him on the spot.  Lewis Carroll tries to cheer the distraught Alice by taking her photograph; he puts the camera cloth over his head but he sprouts a bunny-tale and emerges as the White Rabbit... the chaos begins.  But don't worry... Alice and Jack are reunited at the end but not in the Victorian era...

Needless to say the cast were flawless: Anna Rose O'Sullivan was a delightfully feisty Alice, establishing a lively character from the start which continued through the Wonderland scenes.  Steven McRae originated the role of The Mad Hatter in 2011 as Wheeldon was impressed with his tap skills as the role consists of a long tap solo during the tea party scene but at our performance he played the roles of Alice's gardener friend Jack and the Jack of Hearts whose stealing of the Queen's jam tarts threads through the show until it climaxes with the anarchy of his trial.  I was disappointed not to see him as the Mad Hatter but it would have meant getting about 5 minutes of seeing him onstage so I happily settled for seeing him throughout the production instead.

Laura Morera was huge fun as the nasty Queen of Hearts, none more so than in her dance with three petrified courtiers, all too aware what will happen if they go wrong.  Based around the Rose Adagio from SLEEPING BEAUTY, Morera was hilarious as she twisted herself into grotesque ballerina positions clinging to her hapless partners for support.

There was also fine support from Alexander Campbell as Lewis Carroll and The White Rabbit, Joseph Sissens as the tapping Mad Hatter - but missed the charisma that McRae would naturally bring to the role - and Nicol Edmonds as the sinuous Caterpillar.

Sadly the performances are all over for this run but it was screened in cinemas last week and I am sure this new classic will be back in the repertoire soon, as Owen said it really would make a great Christmas show.

THE NUTCRACKER at Covent Garden - Interrupted magic...

On the Monday before Xmas it was time to revisit the Royal Ballet's evergreen production of THE NUTCRACKER.  Yes, once again it was time to revisit the workshop of Herr Drosselmeyer, battle the Mouse King and journey to the Land of Sweets via the magical growing Christmas tree on the stage of Covent Garden.  Well I suppose three out of four isn't bad.

The Royal Ballet production of choreographer Peter Wright's THE NUTCRACKER is a Christmas staple at Covent Garden and after having fallen totally under it's spell last year, we pirouetted back for another helping, in fact we saw it's 436th performance!  This year is an extra-special revival as it mark's Sir Peter's 90th birthday.

It was a joy to see again and to hear the Royal Opera House orchestra under the baton of Boris Gruzin bring Tchaikovsky's thrilling score to life again - the second act could almost be called Ballet's Greatest Hits with the Chinese and Russian Divertissements followed by the Prince and Sugar Plum Fairy's glorious pas de deux and her solo.

We were about a third into the opening scene and gearing up to the big reveal - Drosselmeyer's shrinking Clara to the size of the Nutcracker by the scenic ploy of having the Christmas Tree at the back of the stage seeming to grow bigger and bigger and bigger.

Christopher Saunders as Drosselmeyer whipped his cloak around and about - it must be said not a patch on Gary Avis' capework from last year - and Meaghan Grace Hinkis' Clara fluttered about expectantly... but the tree stayed the same size.  With a whoosh the curtains flew in and a stage manager appeared to tell us that due to technical difficulties they were going to have stop for a few minutes... but, but, it's - like - Covent Garden!!!  It's the Christmas Tree!!!!

After what seemed an eternity - but probably not that long really - the orchestra struck up the transformation music, the curtains parted - and there was Clara and Drosselmeyer whirling away in front of the fully-grown tree.  I guess it was ok in the long run but darn, Constant Reader... I wanted to see the damn thing grow!

But the great thing about Peter Wright's NUTCRACKER is that it doesn't hang around over anything for too long, it's forever moving forward.  So after Clara defeats the Mouse King and frees Drosselmeyer's handsome nephew Hans-Peter from his Nutcracker spell, they are off into the world to experience the joy of dancing snowflakes and their trip to become guests of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince.

Although I liked Hinkis and Valentino Zucchetti as Clara and Hans-Peter, I felt that Federico Bonelli and Laura Morera as the Prince and the Sugar Plum Fairy, while fine together, lacked something in their solos - the pairing last year of Steven McRae and Iana Salenko were excellent together and apart.

But the total work was still glorious: Wright's always thrilling choreography, the late Julia Trevelyan Oman's exquisite design and Mark Henderson's lighting all combine to make The Royal Ballet's THE NUTCRACKER a perennial must-see at Christmas time. 

Just sort out that Christmas Tree for next time, eh?