Mini-review – Beauty and the Beast – Northern Ballet at Leeds Grand

In these days of fewer dance companies and more reliance on the “tried and true” in choreography (I counted four Nutcrackers in London this December, all of them remounts), it’s a cause for celebration when a new ballet is choreographed. So when I saw some photos for Northern Ballet’s production of Beauty and the Beast, I saw dangled before me a great opportunity to see a completely new ballet (a story I’d never even seen danced before) as well as a wonderful excuse to travel to the lovely city of Leeds. Tickets were bought (not for opening night, alas, but a convenient Sunday matinee), and off I went to figure out what story supported the rather intriguing costuming.

The show starts with some fantastic scene setting, as our almost Dorian Grey-like Beast-to-be (Kenneth Tindall as Prince Orian) preens and enjoys the fun of being shallow, pretty, and popular. This scene was great storytelling, effectively communicating the idea of his incredible ego and selfishness – in essence, the monster he is inside – is laid out perfectly clearly to us. It seems fitting for an evil fairy (I think called La Fee Magnifique – Victoria Sibson) to turn his outside into a creature that matches his inside – the Beast (Ashley Dixon, most astoundingly muscular in a rather X-Men style).

The story then switches to that of Beauty (Martha Leebolt) and her family, her luckless, feckless father (Darren Goldsmith) and her shallow, selfish sisters (Georgina May and Pippa Moore). While the sisters are obsessed with clothing and dances, Beauty (in a Matilda-esque turn) is a great reader – noticed by her sisters’ suitors but disinterested in the milieu. Of course, this means that when financial disaster falls (comically done with a cleverly designed moving van and some handsome debt collectors), she’s much better able to handle sudden poverty. The scenes of Beauty’s family in the woods post-financial crisis are great, with a wonderful rusting camper van adding a very modern touch to the set while giving Beauty plenty of opportunity to show her practicality and selflessness.

I could go on with describing the story – there’s a rose, Beauty goes to the Beast’s castle in her father’s stead, happy endings all around – and the nicely done sets (such as the rose bower where Beauty sleeps – sadly the costumes seemed generally flimsy and not worth discussing) – but in summary, I was hoping for much better choreography and I just didn’t get it. There is a lovely sequence with Beauty dancing with her dream prince – the Beast in his handsome incarnation – with the envious and sad ugly Beast watching on – that had the kind of emotional complexity expressed through movement that I can really get swept up in. But so much of it was just … well, it seemed to be moving us along from plot point to plot point, getting the tale told, and not giving us a chance to revel in the joy of ballet. I often tell people that the whole point of story ballets is providing us with a plot that allows us to string a lot of wonderful dancing together, but in this case, the story really took over. I did enjoy myself, but I felt like somewhere there will be another choreographer that tells this story in a way that speaks to me more deeply as a lover of dance.

(This review is for a performance that took lace on Sunday, December 18th, 2011, where it continues through December 31st. The show runs for about 2 1/2 hours with two intervals; I consider it to be very suitable for families due to the sustained drama keeping energy levels high. There is a review of it in the Telegraph should you care to read it. It will be touring extensively: Edinburgh, Festival Theatre; Sheffield, Lyceum theatre; Hull New Theatre; Milton Keynes Theatre; Cardiff, New Theatre; Canterbury, Marlowe Theatre.)

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Hamlet – Northern Ballet Theatre – Sadler’s Wells

I have to say I was a bit worried about how a ballet interpretation of Hamlet would come out. I’d gone to see Christopher Wheeldon’s “Elsinore” last year, and it just had no emotional power at all. How could such a neat tale, one of the most powerful tales in western literature, come off so damn flat? It almost made me feel like modern choreographers should just stick with plotless ballets. But since “Romeo and Juliet” is really so good, and I think ballet/dance really is good at story telling, AND I have this bizarre wish to see the repertory of story ballets extended beyond the old chestnuts (I mean, seriously, Matthew Bourne has done so well – with retreads), that I just queued right up for tickets for this show, based simply on a desire for wish fulfillment. (And right beforehand, I turned to J and said, “God, I hope this is good!” – the theatre-goer’s eternal prayer.)

To my pleasure, Northern Ballet Theatre’s Hamlet (choreographed by David Nixon and new this year) was really good. They had moved the story up to World War Two and Occupied Paris – a fairly common resetting for Shakespeare, at least in terms of the World Wars – but then made several changes to the story that could irritate purists but served to drive the story much better than a slavish adherence to the original would have. Hamlet’s dad (Steven Wheeler) was Paris’ head of police, killed by his uncle Claudius (Darren Goldsmith) in a blatant act of career climbing/toadying when the Nazis moved into town. This means that Hamlet (Christopher Hinton-Lewis, phwoar) is not a prince in this show, but, as a commoner, his grief at the loss of his dad is actually much more moving. I also found the women quite intriguing in an environment in which dealing with powerlessness and being, essentially, prisoners so strongly informed their actions. Gertrude (Nathalie Leger) was a fool, to be sure, but she seemed so much less of a conspirator than just another person trying to survive in very bad circumstances, and at the end, her affection for Hamlet seemed quite genuine (despite the fact that during the, er, sex scene with Claudius, she looked most unmotherly and quite sprightly in her vintage 40’s unmentionables).

And, of course, there’s Ophelia (Georgina May). Oddly, I’ve just come off of reading the book Something Rotten, which is a meta-literary comedy in which Ophelia and Polonius attempt to become the stars of the “play formerly starring Hamlet,” and it’s somehow left me with this idea that Ophelia isn’t satisfied with her role in the play (even though this is totally an artifact of the book). I felt like Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia was much better realized in this ballet than it is in the play – their love dance in the first act was just … beautiful (*gets goosebumps*). The way Hamlet lifted and carried her over his back (once he’d finally engaged with her through his sorrow), the way they held each other’s faces, the way he slid above her and she grabbed ahold of his body to lift herself right up off of the floor – it showed a degree of affection and tenderness that I never saw in Shakespeare. In addition, her mad scene in act two was FANTASTIC, a total star turn for Miss May. I’ve never seen changing the way someone walks so perfectly capture someone who’s gone over the edge – clip-clopping flat-footed in her toe shoes, hiding behind pillars, and of course handing out her bizarre little Nazi posies to the various guests at the dance. She put Lucia di Lammermoor to shame and, frankly, pulled far more of a star turn than the original Ophelia ever managed. Complain about lack of faith to the original? You’ll not hear me make a peep. This adaptation was nothing short of fantastic.

There was a lot more to this show, though, including leaping leather clad Nazis, black gowned Cabaret-style chanteuses, torture scenes, and men dancing in boots up to their knees – not really in the style of either a typical R&J (for some reason as a ballet Romeo and Juliet is ALWAYS Renaissance Italy) or a sexless Swan Lake. I can’t really say that the dance was outstanding other than in the Ophelia scenes – there was a near total lack of dancing on pointe, which made me sad – but it was good, in general, there was a rockin’ duel at the end, and it was a coherent work of theater that came complete with an original score. In short: highly recommended, and I hope it passes into the general ballet repertory.