SWAN LAKE at Sadler's Wells - Bourne Again...

I last saw Matthew Bourne's iconic SWAN LAKE in 2013 and in the intervening five years - thanks to Wayne McGregor's WOOLF WORKS for the Royal Ballet - I have had a wider exposure to both classical and modern ballet, mostly at Covent Garden.  So it was with added excitement that I took my seat - K row stalls of course - to see again this very special production.

This was my fifth time seeing Bourne's SWAN LAKE in the theatre and it never fails to move me emotionally in it's dying moments; other Bourne productions may now seem too much style over content - EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, DORIAN GRAY - but SWAN LAKE taps into the emotions and always delivers.

Bourne has re-visited his masterpiece and now has Paule Constable as the lighting designer and added video images by Duncan McLean, it was delightful to see the little touches that kept it fresh.  Lez Brotherston's designs are still wonderfully atmospheric and the excellent Bourne dancer Kerry Biggin has re-staged the show wonderfully.

Bourne's scenario stays the same: A lonely Prince has a distant relationship with his mother The Queen while surrounded by the soulless life at court.  Attempting to elude the plotting of the corrupt Private Secretary - who has paid a silly blonde to be his girlfriend - The Prince runs off into the night determined to drown himself in a lake. Once there he is surrounded by a bevy of swans and he instantly becomes enraptured by their leader, an imperious, mysterious Swan who guardedly returns the Prince's friendliness until they share a romantic pas-de-deux.  The Prince runs off exultant.

However the appearance of a dark and dangerous stranger at the Palace ball throws the Prince into a mental tailspin when the Stranger - who seems to embody the same magnetism as The Swan - jeers at the Prince and is determined to seduce the all-too-willing Queen.  When the Prince pulls a gun on the couple, all hell breaks loose, the girlfriend is shot trying to shield the Prince and he is dragged away.  Alone and delirious, his salvation appears with the arrival of the Swan but the bevy of jealous swans surround them wanting blood...

It's a production that just immerses me in it's tragic plot and as I said, in it's final moments I was again blinking back the tears.  The performances across the cast were as strong as always: Bourne favourite Liam Mower was a wonderfully fluid Prince, his smallest movements were tremulous and full of pain, making his final breakdown all the more heartbreaking; he really invested the character with an aching solitude.

Katrina Lyndon was a brittle yet lusty Queen and Freya Field found all the laughs in the clutzy girlfriend role while Glenn Graham was fine as the Private Secretary; the ensemble all gave committed performances and the four cygnet dancers got a huge and deserved ovation for their wonky, flapping set-piece.  The Swan / Stranger was commandingly danced by Max Westwell, making his debut with the New Adventures company, and he rose to the challenge of the two roles well.

So there we are... SWAN LAKE is back and brighter than ever.  All Sadler's Wells dates are sold out but it is then going on an extensive UK tour from January to May, visiting Milton Keynes, Birmingham, Southampton, Dublin, Glasgow, Bristol, Canterbury, Norwich, Liverpool, Wimbledon, Hull, Woking, Newcastle and Sheffield - check for availability by clicking here

Swans: Now and Forever...

LES PATINEURS / WINTER DREAMS / THE CONCERT at Covent Garden - light and shade...

My last visit to the Royal Ballet this year was to see another of their mixed programmes, curated to celebrate three great choreographers: Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan and Jerome Robbins.  As usual it was also a perfect opportunity to show the breadth of talent across the Royal Ballet company.

First was Ashton's LES PATINEURS which debuted in 1937 and is set to music by the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, a composer whose operas have fallen out the repertoire but his themes were wonderfully arranged by Constant Lambert into a fizzing, whirling delight.  At only 35 minutes it's an almost perfect cameo of ballet pleasure.  The Royal Ballet are still using the original designs by William Chappell and it almost took your breath away when first seen - a glorious Victorian Christmas illustration come to life, each colour popping off the stage.

A group of 15 dancers dance/skate across the stage in various combinations: a group of eight dancers in red and blue give way to three couples in reddish-brown, blue and white and a solo male dancer in blue, whose effortless spins and leaps supposedly were inspired by Ashton's admiration of another Fred, Mr. Astaire.  It was utterly captivating and is going to be revisited hopefully again sometime.  The ballet was a tribute to Ashton's dazzling vision and style - effortlessly elegant but with a grounding in pattern and technique.  The company were excellent but special mention to Luca Acri as the effervescent boy in blue.

The mood changed dramatically with MacMillan's WINTER DREAMS which uses Chekhov's THREE SISTERS for inspiration.  The ballet had it's first performance in 1991 and MacMillan said he did not want to do a literal ballet adaptation of the play but to use it as a template to explore the emotions of loneliness and longing.  MacMillan originally staged it as a pas-de-deux for Masha and Vershenin as part of a gala for the Queen Mother's 90th birthday and expanded it to make a full 55 minute one-act ballet.

It's been quite a while since I saw THREE SISTERS so I was a bit shaky as to who was who but the central theme of the isolation of the three sisters was palpable and they were danced beautifully by Itziar Mendizabal as Olga, Sarah Lamb as Masha and Yasmin Naghdi as Irina with fine support from Gary Avis as Kulygin and Vadim Muntagirov as Vershenin; he and Lamb danced the central pas-de-deux wonderfully.  As with all MacMillan's finest work, WINTER DREAMS had an ominous air of sadness about it and it's duel scene towards the end reminded me of MAYERLING with it's guns and figures under umbrellas.  I think however I would have liked to have seen it grouped with other ballets as the wrench from the gaiety of the Ashton piece to the MacMillan was a bit too jarring.  The ballet is set to music by Tchaikovsky and it sounded wonderful shared between Russian stringed instruments and Robert Clark's piano.

The last ballet was Jerome Robbins' THE CONCERT first performed by NY City Ballet in 1956.  Set to music by Chopin, a fussy concert pianist - Robert Clark proving to be a right trooper - plays to a small audience who spend more time fidgeting and daydreaming than they do just listening.  Their various personal thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of six ballerinas who attempt a pas de six but end up facing the wrong way or with the wrong arm raised etc.

It's a slight piece but made up a pleasing sandwich with LES PATINEURS for the more weighty WINTER DREAMS, and it was well performed by the company who communicated a sense of delight in being able to do comedy. 

The art of curating a mixed programme is a tricky one but I was delighted to have seen these three ballets in one sitting and see some favourite dancers in new roles.

Onto the 2019 season...!

50 Favourite Musicals: 31: ASSASSINS (1990) (Stephen Sondheim)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

First performed: 1990, Playwrights Horizons, US
First seen by me: 1992, Donmar Warehouse, London

Productions seen: four

Score: Stephen Sondheim
Book: John Weidman

Plot:  In a funfair, a shooting-range proprietor calls eight men and women to try their luck at his stall.  They are revealed to be eight misfits who attempted - and in some cases succeeded - in assassinating United States Presidents.

Five memorable numbers: EVERYBODY'S GOT THE RIGHT, THE GUN SONG / THE BALLAD OF CZOLGOSZ, UNWORTHY OF YOUR LOVE, THE BALLAD OF BOOTH, THE BALLAD OF GUITEAU

The collaborations between Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman always give us the unexpected: the coerced opening up of Japan to Western trade in PACIFIC OVERTURES, and the ways to make and lose fortunes in early 20th Century America in ROAD SHOW; but their most avant-garde and controversial musical remains ASSASSINS, a show that challenges it's audience to at least understand four Presidential assassins and five would-be ones.  Short dramatic and black comedy scenes are glued together by Sondheim's score which encompasses styles of Americana music to devastating effect.  Weidman's book presents the assassins' warped manifestos and expose them to be disenfranchised loners who realized that if someone has power and fame then a way to get some of that is to be the person who kills them.  They gather together from across history: John Wilkes Booth, Giuseppe Zangara, Leon Czolgosz, Charles Guiteau, John Hinckley, Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme and Sarah Jane Moore.  Weidman gives two non-musical scenes to the insane rantings of Samuel Byck, on his way to fly a hijacked plane into Richard Nixon's White House and - in the musical's most chilling scene - the assassins emerge from the shadows of the Texas School Book Depository to make Lee Harvey Oswald realise his destiny  Sondheim's score constantly surprises with it's musical sang-froid - Hinkley and Fromme sing a Carpenters-style love song but with a chilling aspect as they are singing of their deranged love for Jodie Foster and Charles Manson; Guiteau performs a minstrel-style cakewalk as he capers up the scaffold stairs; a Souza march is utilized to counterpoint the bitter ravings of Zangara from the electric-chair that there are no photographers present; a barbershop quartet harmonize over their guns; and the show's narrator, The Balladeer, sings a tongue-twisting bouncy song to illustrate Czolgosz's shuffling progression to the head of a queue to shake hands with William McKinley - and shoot him.  Interestingly The Balladeer presents an echo of Sondheim's previous musical INTO THE WOODS as three-quarters through each show, the characters turn on their narrator, disagreeing with his version of events - here the result is the barnstorming "Another National Anthem" as the assassins show their actions as warped versions of searching for The American Dream.  With it's small cast, minimal set and relatively small number of songs, ASSASSINS has been seen in a few fringe revivals in London - not all of them successful - but my fondest memory is of Sam Mendes' UK premiere production at the Donmar, with excellent, idiosyncratic performances by David Firth (Booth), Louise Gold (Moore), Ciaran Hinds (Byck), and Henry Goodman, unforgettable as the insane Guiteau.  Interestingly, it was for the Donmar production that Sondheim added a song after the Lee Harvey Oswald scene "Something Just Broke" which gives a voice to ordinary people at their shock and sadness of Kennedy's killing; an attempt to re-balance the show which I can understand but think it rather undercuts the show's ominous power.  Those fringe revivals that felt too obvious is why ASSASSINS is placed lower than it ideally should be in my list.

Here is the show's final number, performed by the 2004 Broadway cast including Neil Patrick Harris, Michael Cerveris and Denis O'Hare, at the Tony Awards where it won five awards.  The song, a reprise of the opening number "Everybody's Got The Right" is the most Broadway-sounding song in the score but reiterates Sondheim and Weidman's contention that the assassins' saw their actions as being some sort of unalienable right...  The original 1991 cast recording remains sublime.

DVD/150: MOMENT TO MOMENT (Mervyn LeRoy, 1966)

Jean Seberg's films are so rarely available that it is a pleasure to finally see one that she was the main star in, Mervyn LeRoy's 1966 thriller MOMENT TO MOMENT.

Yes it's a vehicle that would have fitted any 1960s actress but Seberg brings warmth and intelligence to it and is well partnered by Honor Blackman, fresh from GOLDFINGER.

Kay lives on the Riviera with her psychiatrist husband and son, and is friends with divorcee Daphne.  During one of husband Neil's absences, she befriends Mark, an American ensign.

She tries to keep Mark at arm's length but one night they make love, but when Kay tells him they must never meet again, his violence results in him being accidentally shot.

Kay and Beryl dump his body but when Neil returns home, the police ask him to interview a sailor recovering from a shooting but now amnesiac...

Hollywood hokum but watchable...

Shelf or charity shop?  An oddly unthrilling thriller but it's a keeper for radiant Jean, looking wonderful in Yves Saint-Laurent.

50 Favourite Musicals: 32: ME AND MY GIRL (1937) (Noel Gay, Douglas Furber & L. Arthur Rose)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

First performed: 1937, Victoria Palace, London

First seen by me: 1985, Adelphi Theatre, London

Productions seen: one

Score: Noel Gay, Douglas Furber & L. Arthur Rose
Book: Furber, Rose (Stephen Fry/Mike Ockrent: 1984 revision)

Plot:  The 1930s: Cockney barrow-boy Bill Snibson is discovered to be the sole heir of the title of Earl Hareford.  A clash of class cultures ensues with Bill being expected to become a proper gentleman before he acquires the title, but can he say goodbye to his roots and his sweetheart Sally?

Five memorable numbers: ME AND MY GIRL, THE SUN HAS GOT HIS HAT ON, THE LAMBETH WALK, THINKING OF NO ONE BUT ME, TAKE IT ON THE CHIN

I must admit I was tempted to go down to Chichester this year to see their revival of Noel Gay's classic British musical ME AND MY GIRL but I stayed my booking hand as I wanted to hang on to the memory of the late Mike Ockrent's glorious production which made a home at the Adelphi Theatre for an amazing eight year run, improbably making nearly 50 year-old chestnuts like "Leaning On A Lampost", "The Sun Has Got His Hat On" and "The Lambeth Walk" popular again. This gender-reversal of MY FAIR LADY was given a zinger-overhaul by Stephen Fry and was blessed with a terrific cast who brought new life to some fairly hackneyed stereotypes; anyone who has seen 1930s British films will recognize them all: cheeky cockney, sensible girlfriend, posh man-eater, old codger, formidable dowager, upper-class twit, etc.  What Ockrent did was keep the show moving with peppy choreography by Gillian Gregory, who gave "The Lambeth Walk" a new shine and sent the actors out with it into the auditorium to close the first act, and to cast it with performers who knew how to connect the material to the audience.  Robert Lindsay found Bill a role perfect for his abrasive persona and went on to win both the Olivier Award (then called the SWET Award) and Tony Award when he transferred to Broadway with it.  ME AND MY GIRL gave me my first exposure to Emma Thompson - then known as an alternative comedian - and was lucky to meet her several times through a friend who was a huge fan of the show.  She had a delightful quality on stage - a great chemistry with Lindsay - she was funny of course but with a touching vulnerability when singing her big number "Once You Lose Your Heart"; she has recently been disparaging about having to be so relentlessly upbeat onstage for the length of her run which I think is rather churlish.  I must also mention the delicious Susannah Fellows who played the role of the vampish Lady Jacqueline with a brittle high-comedy elegance and a crystal-like singing voice. Maybe if a West End revival happens I might go - I think the time is right for some true escapism - but when you have seen the best..

Here are that original cast on the 1984 Royal Variety Performance negotiating the dull stage set while giving a curtailed version of "The Lambeth Walk".  Still, great to have as a memory...

DVD/150: REBECCA (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)

Hitchcock ended his British career with the misjudged JAMAICA INN based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier and his Hollywood career began with another, REBECCA, and it remains one of his greatest - his only film to win the Best Picture Oscar.

Despite producer David O. Selznick's interference, Hitchcock's film is a triumph of sustained mystery.

A timid orphan, a paid companion to an overbearing American, is befriended in Monte Carlo by the suave widower Maxim de Winter who proposes to her; although he is occasionally remote, she accepts.

At his mansion Manderley, she finds everywhere the oppressive presence of Maxim's first wife Rebecca who drowned a year before.  Her nemesis is the disdainful, obsessed housekeeper Mrs Danvers who keeps Rebecca's bedroom as a shrine to her beloved mistress.

Vivien Leigh lobbied for the lead role but was considered too forceful a presence, leaving Joan Fontaine to triumph in it.

Shelf or charity shop?  An absolute keeper, for Hitchcock's masterly storytelling as well as Franz Waxman's swooning score, and the performances of Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, the wonderful Judith Anderson as Mrs Danvers, sexy George Sanders as Rebecca's cousin and lover, and delightful support from Gladys Cooper, Nigel Bruce and Florence Bates.

Redux: CAROLINE OR CHANGE at Playhouse / THE NUTCRACKER at Covent Garden

Now we are at the end of 2018 it was interesting to be able to look back at productions previously seen which are now revived: the Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori musical CAROLINE, OR CHANGE which transferred from Chichester to Hampstead earlier this year and is now shouting out at the Playhouse Theatre and also the Royal Ballet's evergreen - or ever-snowy - THE NUTCRACKER with choreography by Peter Wright.

It was good to see CAROLINE, OR CHANGE again and I found it again to be a musical that resists the urge to make it easy for it's audience, with five characters all locked in their own private mental spaces and who find connecting to be fraught with suspicion and defensiveness which makes for a difficult first act as it's hard to see where the audience's sympathies should lie.  However the second act reveals cracks in the characters' carapaces giving them the possibility of  connecting: mother to daughter, stepmother to stepson.

Sharon D. Clarke is still playing the Louisiana single mother Caroline Thibodeaux who supports her daughter and two sons by being the 'daily' for the Jewish Gellman family.  Caroline spends most of her time in the basement service room with the washing machine, the dryer and the radio - unsurprisingly the creators have these appliances personified and they sing songs that illustrate and comment on Caroline's situation.

Caroline is a defensive, guarded woman, quietly angry at the world and finds it hard to accept affection from any quarter, while her eldest daughter Emmie is quietly angry with society's attitudes and her mother's inability to accept change, Stuart Gellman is a widower still grieving for his dead wife although his has since remarried, his new wife Rose is growing more and more unhappy with her distant husband and his guarded son Noah who is himself still grieving for his dead mother and who constantly tries to engage with Caroline who is amiable but keeps him at arm's length. In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the characters all have to face up to change and all the implications of their actions.

Practically all the original cast have transferred to the Playhouse and the performances have grown with their exploration of the deeply woven characters: Lauren Ward and Alastair Brokenshaw as Rose and Stuart Gellman, Teddy Kempner as Rose's firebrand father from New York and Naana Agyei-Ampadu as Caroline's more outgoing fellow domestic Dotty. There is also stand-out support from Me'sha Bryan as the bubbly Washing Machine and Angela Caesar as the ever-watchful Moon.

Abiona Omonua is marvellous as Emmie who yearns to break free from her mother's demands to be submissive and to stay in her place; she has a lovely singing voice and has a vital presence on stage.  However the show is dominated by the mighty Sharon D. Clarke as Caroline, her solitary pain burns off the stage and you are on the edge of your seat waiting for her eventual explosion and indeed when she breaks and sings the searing "Lot's Wife" Clarke releases a tsunami of pent-up anger and pain that hits hard.  With this role, Sharon D. Clarke ascends to being a true theatre great, and her recent tv appearances in the new DOCTOR WHO will surely bring her a much-deserved wider fame.

Nigel Lilly's music direction brings Tesori's challenging score to vibrant life, Fly Davis' set and costumes look fine in their new home, Ann Yee's choreography is still thrilling and Michael Longhurst's direction holds the whole production together, quite the more remarkable for this being his first musical.  CAROLINE, OR CHANGE is booking until 6th April and I recommend it highly.

In a different world totally to Caroline and her basement is Peter Wright's glorious version of Tchaikovsky's THE NUTCRACKER at Covent Garden.  This was our third time seeing it but it is so magical it is always worth a re-visit. I don't think I can improve on what I blogged in 2015 after my first visit to it:  "The production is simply enchanting, radiating warmth and goodwill like a particularly large glass of mulled wine.  Helped immeasurably by the late Julia Trevelyan Oman's designs, Wright's take on the story has the magician Drosselmeyer mourning that his nephew has been transformed by an enemy into a nutcracker, as you do!  His chance to undo the spell comes with a Christmas invitation to a family where he gives the nutcracker to the young daughter Clara."

Clara and the newly-restored nephew have adventures before visiting the court of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince and also experience the the divertissements organized by Drosselmeyer, and all danced to Tchaikovsky's magical score which features some of ballet's greatest hits.

We were spoilt in 2015 as we saw Francesca Hayward as Clara, Alexander Campbell as The Nutcracker, Gary Avis as Drosselmeyer, Iana Salenko as The Sugar Plum Fairy and Steven McRae as her Prince, a truly memorable cast which has not been replicated since, this year we had Emma Maguire as a vivacious Clara, Luca Acri as an athletic Nutcracker, Christopher Saunders as Drosselmeyer, Yasmine Naghdi as Sugar Plum and Ryoichi Hirano as the Prince.  They were all fine but lacking the star wattage of the 2015 cast, however we were lucky to have the wonderful Itziar Mendizabel as the focal point of the Arabian dance, sinuous and statuesque.

Christopher Carr staged it wonderfully again and the ROH Orchestra made Tchaikovsky's score flood the auditorium to the rafters under the baton of Barry Wordsworth.  If you have never experienced this production you really are missing a magical experience: all performances appear to be sold out for the rest of the run but it does get revived occasionally on cinema screens and the DVD of the production is also available.

DVD/150: KIKA (Pedro Almodóvar, 1993)

KIKA almost works but the combination of an unfocused storyline and uninvolving characters leaves it frustratingly adrift.

It feels like Verónica Forqué's Kika was supposed to be the focus but Almodóvar changed his mind to focus on a satirical take on reality television.

Kika is a Madrid make-up artist who loves photographer Ramón although she occasionally sleeps with his father, American writer Nicholas, who has a strained relationship with Ramón who suspects him of being involved in his mother's suicide.

Nicolas provides storylines to an exploitative reality show presented by Ramón's former lover, Andrea Scarface, When an escaped prisoner rapes Kika, footage of it is shown on Andrea's show but as Kika's life crumbles, Andrea realizes that Nicholas is not all he seems...

Forqué and Rossy de Palma shine but are swamped by the lacklustre performances of Victoria Abril as Scarface and miscast (and dubbed) Peter Coyote as Nicholas.

 

 

Shelf or charity shop? Will stay on the shelf as it's part of an Almodóvar box-set but not viewed much..  Gaultier's frocks are as outrageous as one might expect!

 

Theatre of War: WAR HORSE at the Lyttelton Theatre; THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER Mixed Programme at Covent Garden

As was expected, the theatre also marked the Centenary of the end of Word War I in November and I saw two of the productions that marked the event.

First off was the more obvious one, the National Theatre's game-changing production of WAR HORSE which had been on manoeuvres around the country before reaching the Lyttelton Theatre stable for an extended stay until the start of January.

As Mr and Mrs World know by now, WAR HORSE is based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo about Albert Narracott who, although under-age, joins up to find his beloved horse Joey who has been sold to the army and is somewhere on the Western Front; while there boy and horse both experience the carnage of war at first hand.  I was lucky to see both the original 2007 production and the 2008 revival, both at the Olivier Theatre and both were very moving, involving productions - just ask Stephen Sondheim who was a blubbing wreck in 2007 on the night we went!

It then moved to the New London Theatre where it had an amazing run from 2009 to 2016.  Joey has since become a mainstay of many Remembrance celebrations, a genuine iconic presence.  I had such vivid memories of the show that it was a surprise that it was nearly ten years since I had seen it last so another visit was definitely on the cards.

The good news is that Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris' production - here re-directed by Katie Henry - still delivers the emotional crescendo which had the Lyttelton audience sobbing and sniffing and there are certain images that are indelible once you have seen them, however...  it is a given that no one really goes to see WAR HORSE for the cast's performances - Nick Dear's adaptation is more weighted towards Joey, his equine rival Topthorn and the Narracott's family goose - but even by these standards the anonymity of the performances was quite astonishing.

Thomas Dennis as Albert hardly registered and, as his irascible father Ted, Gwilym Lloyd huffed and puffed to very little effect.  There is also a very odd performance from Ben Ingles as the supposedly-sympathetic officer Lt. Nicholls who promises to care for Joey - it was nothing I could really pinpoint but I wouldn't trust him with a My Little Pony toy, let alone our plucky Joey.  Even the usual laugh-generator role of the f-ing Sgt Thunder went for nothing in Jason Furnival's hands.

However I would like to praise Peter Becker as the caring German officer Friedrich Muller who helps Joey and Topthorn when they are captured on the wrong side of No Man's Land, he at least convinced that Muller was a three-dimensional character.  Jo Castelton as Rose Narracott also found some depth as Albert's careworn but worried mother and the John Tams' songs were well sung by Bob Fox.

The best performances were unsurprisingly by the Handspring life-size puppets of Joey, both foal and horse, Topthorn and - yes - the goose.  The puppeteers invested them all with character and emotions which made it very easy to forget the actors and concentrate on them.  In particular, the scenes where  Joey and Topthorn were commandeered by the German army as pack-horses were full of unspoken pathos, none more so than Joey's gentle nuzzling of Topthorn as he dies, exhausted and broken.  The excellent touch of Topthorn's demise being made real by having his puppeteers slowly emerge from the puppet and slowly walking offstage is incredibly effective.

I did feel something was lost in the transfer to the proscenium stage but Rae Smith's spare design, Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler's remarkable puppet design and Paule Constable's lighting still delivered, as did Adrian Sutton's score.  I am glad I experienced WAR HORSE again, but just wish that most of the human cast had invested their roles with the passion that the puppeteers did.

A few days later we saw a more intriguing response to the Centenary, the Royal Ballet's premiere of THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER, which was part of a mixed programme with Wayne McGregor's INFRA and the late George Balanchine's SYMPHONY IN C.

The ballet took as it's inspiration the recorded memories of WWI veteran Wally Patch and a contemporary of his, Florence Billington, who in voice-over remember the quiet and lonely devastation they felt at the deaths of friends and a boyfriend respectively.  These spoken memories are interwoven with the lush, sombre score by film composer Dario Marianelli to create an absorbing soundscape to Alastair Marriott's choreography which illustrates the story of Florence and her beau Ted Feltham; from their meeting at a social dance before the war to his enlisting and subsequent death on the battlefield, cradled by Patch as he dies, to Florence receiving the news by telegram to Ted viewing it all from another place.

The ballet was visually stunning with a fractured, broken video playing on the scrim of contemporary footage of the call to arms in 1914 to the solemn procession of the coffin of the Unknown Soldier in 1920, which eventually raised to reveal Es Devlin's minimalist design of rotating flat panels which were played upon by Bruno Poet's stark lighting to create sweeping changes of tone across the stage while the reminiscences of Patch and Billington were heard.

There were good performances from William Bracewell as Ted and Anna Rose O'Sullivan as Florence but in the cold light of day the ballet failed to move; Marriott's choreography was nice to watch but detracted from the pathos of the spoken testimony of individual loss.  There was no profundity in the thoughts behind the movements but more importantly the very real disconnect between the spoken remembrances of the Western Front's living Hell and the precision and athleticism of the male dancers was too strong to ignore.  The piece ultimately felt like there was no real artistic need for being there, it was a commission to fill a brief in the programming.  I also read somewhere the jibe that he can't be THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER if we know his name was Ted Feltham!

The three ballets in the mixed programme seemed to have been selected to counter-point each other, there was no linear connection between them other than to show off the versatility of the Royal ballet company.  McGregor's INFRA from 2008 had twelve dancers hyper-extending in solos and groups to McGregor's signature taxing choreography while above them Julien Opie's illuminated silhouettes walked in solipsistic silence left and right.  It's an obvious leap to get what McGregor is illustrating - the tortured souls underneath those anonymous walkers - but after a while you long for a resolution.  But always good to hear Max Richter's music...

But then the mood was turned on it's head again with George Balanchine's glorious SYMPHONY IN C, danced to the music of Georges Bizet.  Premiered in 1947 in Paris but extensively re-thought for New York City Ballet the following year, Balanchine drew on his extensive knowledge of the Russian classical tradition from his teenage years with the Imperial Ballet and from his years with the Ballet Russes in the 1920s.

Broken down into four movements with new performers for each, SYMPHONY IN C is a whirlwind extravaganza of pure classical technique: it's like every classical ballet finale with the narrative and named characters removed so you can just concentrate on solos, pas de deux and ensemble routines.  With over 50 dancers onstage as it reaches it's conclusion, it felt so impossibly sumptuous and showy that I almost expected a camera crane to swoop in and a director to yell "cut", such is it's feel of a Hollywood musical idea of a big ballet number.

The four couples were excellently danced by Natalia Osipova, Sarah Lamb, Reece Clarke, Marcelino Sambé, William Bracewell, Anna Rose O'Sullivan, Yuhue Choe and Luca Acri.  It was by far the most memorable piece of the evening and rather put the others in their place.

I would definitely see SYMPHONY IN C again, I am happy to have seen THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER and INFRA but think I would pass on seeing them again.  However as I said earlier, the mixed programme was a wonderful showcase for the talents of the whole Royal Ballet company.