French Revelation: "The Three Musketeers"

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Northern Ballet The Three Musketeers The Lyceum, Sheffield, 27 Oct 2018, 19:45

Coincidentally the last three ballets that I have seen have been set in pre-revolutionary France.  There was Ashton's Fille that I first saw over 50 years ago which was performed at The Lowry by Birmingham Royal Ballet.   There was Manon by Sir Kenneth MacMillan danced by English National Ballet at the Manchester Opera House.  Finally, there was Northern Ballet's rendering of David Nixon's Three Musketeers at the Sheffield Lyceum. 

As I know La Fille mal gardée very well and as it had been created by one of the greatest choreographers who has ever lived I was sure that I would like that work best.  I thought Manon would be number two as it had been created by one of the other all time greats.  I did not know Manon as well as I know Fille but I had seen two impressive HDTV transmissions from Covent Garden. I feared The Three Musketeers would be a bit of an anticlimax as I have not liked every ballet that Nixon has made.  As it happened I enjoyed The Three Musketeers most of all though, I hasten to add, I liked Fille and Manon very much too.

I think the reason that I liked the Musketeers so much is that the company danced particularly well.  They performed with energy and flair.  They were well rehearsed - as slick and polished as ever I have seen them.  They looked as though they were enjoying themselves - particularly the sword fights which were as gripping as anything in Romeo and Juliet - and the touches of slapstick humour like burying the washerwomen with laundry.

I was delighted to see Gavin McCaig (whom I had featured when he first joined the company) as Athos and Javier Torres (my dancer of the year for 2017) as Porthos.  Riku Ito was a sleek d'Artagnan and Sean Bates a convincing Aramis. I am used to seeing Mlindi Kulashe in villainous roles like Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre, the Fury in The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, Casanova's persecutor, the Beast in Beauty and the Beast and Tybalt.  It was a surprise to see him as an "easily manipulated" king.

As for the female roles, the heroine is Constance danced on Saturday by Ayami Miyata.  Intriguingly, I see from her profile that she would have been a lawyer had she not been a dancer. I know of many barristers who imagine themselves on stage.  It is rare and a little flattering to find a beautiful dancer who must have contemplated life the other way round.  Constance's nemesis is Milady de Winter danced by Minju Kang. The fight between those women and the discovery of Milady's branding, of course, the denouement of the story.   It was good to see Pippa Moore again as Constance's mum and Rachael Gillespie as Marie de Hautbois.

The libretto by David Drew bears about as much resemblance to Alexandre Dumas's novel as Petipa's Don Quixote does to Cervantes's.   There is a magnificent score by Sir Malcolm Arnold as arranged by John Longstaff.  The sets by Charles Cusick Smith and costumes are gorgeous.

The show moves on to Canterbury which is easy to reach from London by HS1.   It opens at the Marlowe Theatre on the 31 Oct and continues to 3 Nov 2018.   This is one of the best ballets in the British Isles not to come out of London.   I urge my metropolitan chums to see it.

Much Less Beastly - Indeed Rather Beautiful

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Northern Ballet, Beauty and the Beast, Leeds Grand Theatre, 17 Dec 2016, 19:30

To my great delight and surprise, I enjoyed every single moment of David Nixon's Beauty and the Beast. Delight is obvious. Ballet is expensive. One goes for a good time - not to be bored out of one's skull. Surprise? Well that is because I saw the ballet on 30 Dec 2011 and while I was not exactly bored I was not in rapture either:

"As for Nixon's choreography the first two acts reminded me of early McMillan - works like Anastasia which are not performed very often nowadays for a reason. But the last Act reminded me of Balanchine and I think it was that Act which saved the ballet. The pas de deux between Beauty - danced exquisitely by Martha Leebolt - and the beast showed just what the choreographer can do. Also impressive were Victoria Sibson and Hannah Bateman who danced the fairies, Hironeo Takahashi, the beast's servant and the coryphées, Michela Paolacci, Ayana Kanda, Christie Duncan and Isabella Gasparini who were four sprites. The last Act of the ballet could well stand as a work in its own right. I hope to see that Act many times again but I would happily skip the first two acts with its old bus and bailiffs" (see Ballet and Intellectual Property - my Excuse for reviewing "Beauty and the Beast" 31 Dec 2011 IP Yorkshire).

Funny how something like an old bus can make such an impression.  Sir Matthew Bourne's curtain climbing Aurora sent me up the wall in his Sleeping Beauty (see Why can't I be nicer to Matthew Bourne? 6 Apr 2013) and it took The Car Men to bring me down again (see Motoring 25 June 2015). Similarly, bikes on stage belong in Ashton's Enigma Variations - not in Swan Lake (see Up the Swannee 17 March 2016).

The old bus was still there last night but I didn't mind it at all.  I could appreciate its part in the story. True, bed and breakfast accommodation or a flat on the top but one floor of a tower block where the lift does not work and stairwells are strewn with syringes and reek of urine might be a more usual destination under the Homelessness Act 2002 but, hey, this is theatre. Surely a choreographer or dramaturge is entitled to some poetic licence. Except for placing the story in the present with bailiffs, a removal van and, of course, the old bus Nixon kept pretty close to de Villeneuve's story which is essentially Cinderella in reverse with Carabosse and the Lilac Fairy and dashes of King Lear thrown in for good measure (see Beauty and the Beast Story on Northern Ballet's website).

So why the change of heart second time round?  Well, it helped that some of my favourite dancers were in the show.  Ayami Miyota was Beauty and Mlindi Kulashe a most magnificent beast.  Joseph Taylor was the handsome Prince Orian or the beast before he was taught some manners by La Fée Magnifique danced by the striking Victoria Sibson who also performed that role when I last saw that ballet 5 years ago. Abigail Prudames, another of my favourites, danced La Fée Luminaire (the good fairy) delightfully. Hironao Takahashi, who had danced Alfred 5 years ago, was Beauty's father, a good choice, in my view, because Takahashi has acquired gravitas and dignitas with seniority.  Alfred, or the beast's faithful retainer, was danced by Matthew Koon.  Yet another of my very favourite dancers, Rachael Gillespie, danced one of Beauty's feckless sisters. The other was Mariana Rodrigues who also danced well.  Indeed, everybody did last night so congratulations to all.

I think the choreography has also changed a bit. The show seemed tighter, tenser and more dramatic. Apparently, 20 minutes has been cut. A conclusion reached on Friday night by me and Janet McNulty after a lengthy correspondence on Facebook over whether the ballet had three acts in 2011 or just two as it has now.  Janet insisted that it had two even though I distinctly remembered two intervals and wrote that there were three acts in my review less than 24 hours after seeing the show.  Janet seemed so sure and she will have seen the show several times in 2011 as well as several times more on this run. I feared early signs of senile dementia 5 years ago until my mind was put at rest by one of Janet's friends who found the 2011 programme which mentioned three acts.  I can't remember exactly what has been cut and, clearly, neither can Janet but all the good bits remain, The joyful duet between Beauty and Orian with its fish dive at the end. The beast's thrilling one-handed lift with Beauty spreadeagled several feet above the ground. The amusing dance of the goblins (Matthew Topliss, Jonathan Hanks, Jesse Milligan and Lorenzo Trosello. Equally amusing little touches like Beauty taking tea from a cup while the bear lapped up his from the saucer like a dog.

Beauty and the Beast will be at The Grand until the 7 Jan 2017. I am glad to recommend it.  There seem to be quite a few seats available for most performances although the theatre was quite full last night.  While the best Christmas ballet this year remains Ted Brandsen's Coppelia for the Dutch National Ballet by a country mile and Peter Wright's version of The Nutcracker for the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden is definitely #2, Beauty and the Beast is still a good one. I saw glimmers of the old Northern Ballet Theatre more than once last night.

Up the Swannee

The Swannee River, USA

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Northern Ballet, "Swan Lake", Leeds Grand Theatre, 12 March 19:30

The Leeds Grand Theatre was packed to the gunnels for the last performance of Northern Baller's Swan Lake on Saturday night and the applause at the end was deafening. Cheers, roars, ululations. The audience was almost delirious with excitement. I am sorry to say that I didn't join in with them. I clapped gently at the end of the performance out of respect for the dancers who gave their all.

Had this ballet been called something like Simon and Anthony I might have been a bit more tolerant but it was billed as Swan Lake for goodness sake and it bore as much resemblance to Petipa's masterpiece as the River Medlock does to the mighty Mississippi. Now David Nixon is a fine choreographer and I admire many of his works. I have called his Madame Butterfly a masterpiece and his Cinderella a triumph but I am afraid that his Swan Lake does nothing for me. I have now given it two chances. The first when it came out on 14 Feb 2004 which happened to be my birthday (see Don't Expect Petipa 5 Jan 2015) and the second last Saturday. I am not inclined to give it a third.

"But what didn't you like about it?" asked a classmate from my Over 55 ballet class this morning. "Oh it was so boring" I replied. "Where were Legnani's 32 fouettes?" I replied. "And the divertissements?" The Hungarian seemed to have morphed into a tango and the Neapolitan into a party piece. I found myself looking at my watch almost for the first time ever in over 50 years of ballet going. I didn't like the libretto, the orchestration or arrangement, the sets or even the costumes. It reminded me of the eighties fashions of erecting a Doric arch on a right-to-buy Thatcher house or installing a Rolls Royce grill on a beetle.

The evening was saved for me by the dancers who were good. Many of my favourite dancers were on stage. Jeremy Curnier as Anthony, Antoinette Brooks-Daw as Odette, Ashley Dixon as Simon, Ayami Miyata as Odilia, the magnificent Pippa Moore as Anthony's mother and the equally magnificent Hironaeo Takahashi as his father. There were some good albeit brief performances further down the batting order by Kevin Poeung as young Anthony and Gavin McCaig foundering on his bike.  Their performances would have excited the audience which would be why the show had such a good reception, For many in the audience Northern Ballet's production will have been the first Swan Lake they may have seen in a while. For some it may be the only one they know.

Tchaikovsky's music is of course uplifting and there is only so much one can do to spoil it. Though someone had a pretty good try with the outsize floaty blue textile thingee which you see in the trailer that reminded me of the bear in Wheeldon's The Winter's Tale. The last time I saw Nixon's Swan Lake I had to skedaddle down to Covent Garden to see the Royal Ballet's Swan Lake to get the former out of my system.  The Royal Ballet are not doing Swan Lake this year but English National are at the Albert Hall in the round in June and of course my beloved Scottish Ballet are bringing David Dawson's to Liverpool. The rehearsal on World Ballet Day looks really exciting.

Just because I don't like Northern's Swan Lake doesn't mean you won't. It's running in Sheffield until Saturday and then on to Norwich and Milton Keynes.  And then there's Cathy Marston's Jane Eyre to which I am looking forward very much. They usually run a triple bill in the Stanley and Audrey Burton in Spring which they take to the Linbury but of course the Linbury is closed this year and that is a pity because that is the best show they do. I'll probably give 1984 and Beauty and the Beast a miss this year (it's the bus that get's me) but I can recommend Jean-Christopher Maillot's Romeo and Juliet (see Northern Ballet's Romeo and Juliet - Different but in a Good Way 8 March 2015).

Northern Nutcracker

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Northern Ballet, The Nutcracker, The Grand Theatre Leeds, 18 Dec 2015, 19:00

I had begun to worry about Northern Ballet. 1984 did not quite meet my expectations even second time round (My First Impressions of 1984 12 Sept 2015 and 1984 Second Time Round 24 Oct 2015) and I had seen them dance better than they did in Bradford with Wuthering Heights (see  Northern Ballet's Wuthering Heights in Bradford 22 Nov 2015). All that coinciding with the management's increasing my Friend's membership subscription by 133% including VAT on the basis that the concessions which I have never taken up constitute a chargeable supply (see The Increasing Cost of Friendship 14 Oct 2015).

All of that, however, is in the past - forgotten and forgiven. Last night's performance could not be faulted. It showed Northern Ballet at its best - energetic and exuberant.  I attended last night's show with my teacher and members of my ballet class at Dance Studio Leeds (see Dance Studio Leeds Beginners' Ballet Class 22 Oct 2015). For several members of out class it was our first taste of ballet on stage and for them it must have been magical. I enjoyed it tremendously even though it was at least the third and probably the fourth time time that I had seen that production (see my pre-Terpsichore article Cracking Nuts - Copyright in Choreography IP North West 24 Nov 2011 IP North West).

I think the reason I liked last night's show so much was that all my favourite dancers were there even though some of them were not on stage for very long. The excellent Hannah Bateman danced the Arabian dance with the magnificent Javier Torres and Joseph Taylor. The splendid Hironao Takahashi danced Drosselmeyer. The great Pippa Moore was a slightly dotty granny. Isaac Lee-Baker was the pater familiae. Sean Bates doubled as the Sugar Plum's cavalier and the mischievous little boy who broke the nutcracker. Kevin Poeng was a fine prince, Antoinette Brooks-Daw  a delightful Clara, Niola Gervasi an impressive mouse king and Ayami Miyata a gorgeous sugar plum. Great also to see Gavin McCaig doing so well and Rachael Gillespie and Abigail Prudames are always a pleasure. All the cast did well and I congratulate each and every one of them.

Good though this production was there are a few light touches that could make it perfect. First, the scenery needs a bit of attention.  The walls of the Edwards' drawing room (would it really hurt to call them the Stahlbaums as every other company does?) are noticeably flimsy even when viewed from the gods. The orchestration could be reviewed. More than one member of our group thought it was too light. I missed the vocals in the snow scene at the end of Act I. Why can't James be Fritz or Hans, Clara's pesky little brother? And where were Harlequin and Columbine? French and Chinese dolls, apparently, even though Kiara Flavin, Jeremy Curnier and Matthew Topliss danced them well.

Having said that there are some delightful touches that one does not see in every other production. There are the mime sequences where Clara recounts the battle with the mice to Drosselmeyer and later her dad and the children's pieces, particularly the little chap with his trumpet whom Gita named "man of the match". Cara O'Shea has to be congratulated for the work she did with the little ones for so often it is they who can make The Nutcracker.

The Nutcracker is not to everybody's taste. It is very sweet to the point of sugary. But if you have never seen ballet before - particularly if you are very young - this is a good one to start with and Northern Ballet's is one of the best.