The Scottish Ballet, fresh from their highly acclaimed production of The Sleeping Beauty, have another smash hit in their expanding repertoire. Krzysztof Pastor’s sublime choreography, Tatyana van Walsum’s ‘less is more’ design and Ashley Page’s artistic overview all make hugely significant contributions to a production that has total success written all over it. What a joy it is to watch a creative ballet group, seamlessly mixing traditional with modern to generate what Page calls innovative danced drama.
Sophie Martin is a star. She and Principal dancer Erik Cavallari, as the eponymous couple, dance quite beautifully together, bringing every boy-meets-girl emotion to life with thorough conviction. Soloist Paul Liburd (Mercutio) also struck a chord with an appreciative Eden Court audience for his extraordinarily athletic performance, even though he managed rather too much breast heaving after being stabbed in the back. This is probably not an issue in the rather sparsely populated boxes, but nothing escapes the attention of the packed front stalls. Jarkko Lehmus was a superb king in The Sleeping Beauty and he turns in another strong performance as Juliet’s iron-fist father. Indeed he strikes a pose redolent of Lenin and brings to mind all the imagery of Soviet propaganda posters of the mid twentieth century. If I’m being picky, I’d have to say that Limor Ziv could use a little more breadth of expression, because mouth-open-in-disgust gets a bit tiresome after a while.
In this reworking of the tale, the timeless nature of forbidden love between members of warring families is expanded as a metaphor for discord in wider society and even countries. Good doesn’t prevail over evil. The futility of it all is the big message. And the message is delivered with the help of jerky and grainy black and white newsreel film of everyday streetlife in the 1930s played over a stark and lifeless city scene which, although intended to be Italy, could be anywhere in what used to be the Eastern Block. Costumes reflect and define the three eras of this production but they perhaps lack the flamboyance and sumptuousness of Scottish Ballet’s earlier work. The exception to this is the Jazz Age ball gowns of the Capulet girls, dazzling black and white creations which marry perfectly with the very spare, yet brilliantly conceived, set design.
Once more however, the star turn gets the raw deal with the costumes. Whilst the company enjoy all the design flair, Sophie Martin has to make do with the leftovers from an Oxfam shop. Even her underwear was more M&S than Janet Reger.
It’s because of this production’s creativity that the audience is made to work quite hard, trying to sort out just what’s actually happening on stage. Questions are posed by the imagery, so much so that during the first Act it provoked a good bit of mental gymnastics amongst my party. Of course the answer to this is to go again and concentrate more on the dancing. Unfortunately there’s little opportunity for this. The premier was on 13th May in Edinburgh, from where it has travelled to Aberdeen and Inverness and its final outing is for four days at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow, closing on 7th June. I expect, and hope, that Prokofiev will, like Tschaikovsky, make a return before too long.
Here’s the bottom line. I’m a very recent convert to ballet and I blame my son’s gorgeous partner for this. She introduced me to classical as well as contemporary dance and showed how the two can interweave without the joins being visible. Scottish Ballet are boldly going the same way, bringing spectacular, thought-provoking and updated drama to their audiences, without recourse to tutus and tights. Theirs is dance-centred entertainment which should appeal to everyone who enjoys a show. It’s brilliant stuff.
