Birmingham Royal Ballet performs my favourite ballet at last

Birmingham Royal Ballet

(c) John Lambert 2016: all rights reserved

Birmingham Royal Ballet, The Taming of the Shrew. Birmingham Hippodrome, 18 June 2016

John Cranko created some of his most best known works including The Taming of the Shrew for the Stuttgart Ballet but he trained at Sadler's Wells School and started his career at the Sadler's Wells Ballet part of which is now the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Despite its shared connection with Cranko it was only on the 16 June 2016 (some 47 years after the premiere in Germany) that the Birmingham Royal Ballet was able to stage this work in this country.

For me that is a matter of regret because Cranko appeals to me more than any other choreographer and The Taming of the Shrew is the work that I love most. Even more than The Prince of the Pagodas, Onegin and Pineapple Poll. So if anybody were to ask me which is my favourite ballet I would have to say that it is this one.  I first learned about the work in Dance and Dancers in 1969 and have longed to see it ever since (see Cranko's "Taming of the Shrew": Now's our chance to see one of the Ballets everyone should see before they die 21 Sept 2013). I got my chance on 23 Nov 2013 when the Stuttgart Ballet visited London (see Stuttgart Ballet's "Taming of the Shrew" - well worth the Wait 25 Nov 2013).

I think the reason I love the ballet so much is that I love the play and the reason I love the play is that I love paradox. I began to appreciate the paradox upon seeing snippets of Meryl Streep's performance as Katherina in New York City many years ago (see Kiss me Petrucchio (1981) Meryl Streep and Raul Julia - A Documentary from 1981 on YouTube). I never saw that show but I do remember her explaining the work in a feminist context. I am also enjoying the serialization of Anne Tyler's The Vinegar Girl on Radio 4 just now. In her programme note, Pas de Dukes, Katherine Barber who runs Tours en l'Air (see Tours en l'Air a Really Useful Resource  23 Feb 2014) draws parallels with Romeo and Juliet:

"But The Taming of the Shrew is in many ways the 'anti-Romeo and Juliet.'  Silly (with an inspired silliness and comic. It mirrors its solemn and tragic sibling sometimes scene for scene: a tender wedding with the wise Friar Lawrence becomes a farcical free-for-all with a cartoonish priest; bridesmaids who are an ironic harbinger of death in the one are chased around by a baulky and belligerent bride with a limp lily in the other; a pas de trois depicting exuberant high spirits of young men in Verona becomes a vaudeville trio of Chaplinesque buffoons in Padua. Both ballets end in tears, though in one they are tears of sorrow and the other tears of laughter."

An interesting idea and one that had not occurred to me before though I caution against drawing too many parallels because all love stories and the ballets derived from them share at least some of those elements.

Although the Birmingham Royal Ballet uses Cranko's choreography and Kurt-Heinz Stolze's score the designs are different. Elisabeth Dalton designed the sets and costumes for Stuttgart (see her obituary in The Stage) while Susan Benson designed Birmingham's. One the whole I think I preferred Benson's as they gave an even greater freshness and touch of joy to the Birmingham production. In a post to BalletcoForum Barber suggested that Birmingham Royal Ballet had used the National Ballet of Canada's costumes and it is certainly the case that Benson contributed the designs to the Canadian production (see The National Ballet's Ballet Notes for its 2007 season which incidentally also publishes Barber's article sub nom The Taming of the Shrew: Shakespeare in Motion).

The reason I took notice of the ballet in 1969 is that Cranko deployed a stellar cast:

• Marcia Haydée – Katherina (Kate)
• Richard Cragun – Petruchio
• Susanne Hanke – Bianca
• Egon Madsen – Gremio
• Heinz Claus – Lucentio
• John Neumeier – Hortensio.

The dancers in Saturday's matinee were pretty impressive too. 

Kate was danced by Elisha Willis. I count myself as one of her biggest fans and I had been led to believe by a clipping in the Birmingham Mail that Saturday's would be her last performance (see Roz Laws Birmingham Royal Ballet star Elisha Willis on ditching dancing for stitching 14 June 2016). I have since learned that she will dance at least one more show in Bristol. I shall miss Willis and I wish her all the best for the future. 

Willis was partnered brilliantly by Iain Mackay. Jenna Roberts was a sweet but not too sugary Bianca while Brandon Lawrence was her Lucentio. I also enjoyed Rory Mackay's performance as Gremio (particularly his wooing of Bianco and his discomfiture by Kate), Chi Cao's as Hortensio and Delia Matthews's and Angela Paul's as their wives and Jonathan Payn's as Baptista. However, I should say a special word for Valentin Oloyyannikov who doubled as the publican and priest. He is a great character dancer and his characterization of the cleric was nothing short of brilliant.

The play has inspired Jean-Christophe Maillot to create another version of The Taming of the Shrew for the Bolshoi which was screened to British audiences in  January (see Competition for Cranko: The Bolshoi's Taming of the Shrew streamed from Moscow 25 Jan 2016). I enjoyed the screening very much and I look forward to seeing it live when the Bolshoi bring it to Covent Garden.

Oh Fortuna

Birmingham Royal Ballet - Carmina burana trailer from Birmingham Royal Ballet on Vimeo.

Birmingham Royal Ballet, Carmina Burana, Hippodrome, 20 June 2015

David Bintley comes from Honley which is almost next door to mine (see My Home and Bintley's 12 May 2015). It is not possible to grow up in this part of the world without coming across The Choral. It performs at least three series of concerts to full houses in Huddersfield Town Hall every year. In The Choral 19 Dec 2013 I reviewed one of its concerts and wrote:

"So what's all this got to do with ballet or even dance?" I hear you say. Well I did reserve the right to go off topic occasionally for an exceptional concert and this was certainly exceptional. And we dance in Huddersfield as well as sing (see "The Base Studios, Huddersfield"). We produced David Bintley of the Birmingham Royal Ballet. I don't know whether he had any connection with the Choral or even attended a concert but you can't live in this part of Yorkshire without knowing about it. The Choral must have been part of Bintley's cultural heritage."

I asked Bintley about his cultural influences when he addressed the London Ballet Circle last month and he confirmed that my suspicion was right. However, my suspicions would also have been confirmed by the performance of Carmina Burana at the Hippodrome on 20 June 2015 to celebrate Bintley's 20th anniversary as artistic director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the 25th anniversary of the company's move to Birmingham.

That was a very special evening which I have already described In Praise of Bintley on 21 June 2015. Two works were performed that day:  Bintley's latest ballet The King Dances, which I reviewed in A Special Ballet for a A Special Day 23 June 2015 and Carmina Burana the very first that he created after he was appointed artistic director of the company. I had come to see The King Dances but Carmina Burana was a treat. A multimedia spectacular. A feast as much for the ears as for the eyes. This was the first time I had seen the ballet and how and why I had missed it all those years is a mystery.

Carl Orff's score has always been popular, particularly O Fortuna. Bintley translated her into the Empress of the World, a blindfolded woman in black shift on high heels representing blind fortune. She danced alone completely oblivious to human merit and indeed the human condition. On 20 June 2015 she was danced brilliantly by Céline Gittens. I have seen quite a lot of that dancer this year and my admiration for her has grown in every performance. Incidentally, I was delighted to read about her promotion in the company. I offer my congratulations to her and the other dancers who have been promoted to the enormous number that she and they must already have received (see End of Season Announcements 29 June 2015).

In the Carmina Burana Orff set to music several secular poems about medieval life. Bintley created what are effectively 6 mini-ballets around each of those poems. O Fortuna was an encounter between lady luck (the Empress Fortuna) and seven seminarians. Spring celebrates the fertility of the earth but also of womankind. It is set in a maternity ward with women who are either about to give birth or who have given birth against a backdrop of drying sheets and nappies with the hapless father or naive body danced by Jamie Bond. The next scene is bucolic with village lads in their colourful jackets and the village lasses in their pony tails competing for the attention of Elisha Willis. The second seminarian, Matthias Dingman (who has also been promoted) in a boiling rage seeks solace in the tavern where he and five gluttons in fat suits are served Daria Stanciulescu in a tureen. Finally, the third seminarian, Tyrone Singleton, returns to Fortuna in the Court of Love where he is stripped to his underpants. One of the most effective and affecting endings to a ballet that I have ever seen.

But there are three other stars to this ballet: the designer Philip Prowse who designed the magnificent and spectacular sets and costumes, Philip Mumford for his lighting and the singers of Ex Cathedra. We in Huddersfield like to think that the Choral has a unique sound which you can best appreciate in the Dies Irae of Verdi's Requiem. Birmingham's magnificent choir Ex Cathedra came closer to that sound than any choir I have heard before or since.

Carmina Burana is of course 20 years old but to me it was as fresh and vibrant as if it had been created yesterday.

A Second Miracle

Sir Robert Helpmann

Photo Wikipedia

In Dancing in the Blitz: How World War 2 Made British Ballet David Bintley spoke of Sadler's Wells Ballet's contribution to maintaining morale during the second world war. Much of the credit belongs to Sir Robert Helpmann who was one of the few male dancers to avoid conscription. He was also a considerable choreographer creating  Comus Hamlet, The Birds and Miracle in the Gorbals during that period. The last of those ballets was a particular favourite possibly because it was a story about the conflict between good and evil which would have reminded the public why they were fighting.

The story is based on Jerome K. Jerome's Passing of the Third Floor Back which is a Christian allegory. Jerome's work is set in London and is about the efforts of a Christ figure ("the stranger") to improve the lives of the residents of a boarding house that had been made miserable by a grasping landlady and a well off businessman. The residents listen to the stranger and follow his advice. That upsets the businessman who bribes the residents to turn against the stranger.

Jerome's short story was transposed to Glasgow by Helmpann's partner Michael Benthall who wrote the scenario for the ballet. A young woman throws herself in the river and is dragged out unconscious. A clergyman tries unsuccessfully to revive her.  He covers her with a shroud and leaves her for dead. A stranger appears and revives her. The crowd acclaims the stranger as a miracle worker much to the annoyance of the clergyman whose shortcomings are revealed when he follows a prostitute to her lodging.  He encourages some local gangsters to set about the stranger who is left to die alone on stage with only the a beggar for company.

The music for the ballet was provided by Sir Arthur Bliss a recording of which you can hear on YouTube.   The sets and costumes were designed by Edward Burra (see Pallant House Gallery's Painting the Stage). The cast of the first performance on the 26 Oct 1944 at The Prince's theatre (now the Shaftesbury) included Moira Shearer, Leslie Edwards, Celia Franks, Gerd Larsen, Stanley Holden, Gillian Lynne and Helpmann himself who danced the stranger.

The ballet was included in the repertoire every year between 1944 and 1950 and was taken on tour. It then disappeared from the Sadler's Wells Ballet's repertoire though critics were still referring to it when I first took an interest in ballet in the late 1960s. For some reason the public forgot it in contrast to Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring which was first performed in Washington just four days later and which has much in common with Helpmann's work. No doubt that is because Helpmann developed his acting career though I have seen him dance with Sir Frederick Ashton in Cinderella in the early 1970s. He also compeered Sir Frederick's retirement gala on 24 July 1970 which I was lucky enough to attend.

It was therefore something of a second miracle to see the revival of this work at Sadler's Wells on 18 Oct 2014. Revival is perhaps not quite the right word for as Dame Gilian Lynne said in The Inspiration which was reprinted in the programme: "There are very few people left alive from that 1944 creation and not one of us remembers a step." Lynne has re-created the ballet to Bliss's music in the style of Helpmann and it certainly looks authentic to me. It appears that Burra's set and costume designs did not survive but Adam Wiltshire seems to have come close. The sense of period was conjured by the sounds of an air raid - the drone of an aircraft, explosions, anti-aircraft fire and a siren - all in total darkness before the first few bars of Bliss's score.

Miracle was sandwiched between MacMillan's La Fin du Jour and Bintley's Flowers of the Forest as part of Birmingham Royal Ballet's Shadows of War programme. Each of those ballets is an important work in its own right and therefore merits a separate review. The company had cast some of its strongest dancers for the performance. The stranger was danced by César Morales, the clergyman by Iain Mackay, the prostitute by Elisha Willis and the suicide victim by Delia Matthews.   Even some of the minor roles were danced by accomplished dancers - Marion Tait and Ruth Brill as two of the old ladies - and Yatsuo Atsuji, Brandon Lawrence, Rory McKay and Valentin Olovyannikov as gangsters.

The only other work of Lynne's that I have seen is "A Simple Man" which she choreographed for Northern Ballet to mark the centenary of L S Lowry's birth nearly 30 years ago (see "Northern Ballet's 'A Simple Man'" 14 Sept 2013). That is another ballet set in the back streets of another great industrial city in times gone by. There is much in Miracle that reminds me of A Simple Man. I wonder how much of Simple Man derives from Helpmann.

Other Reviews

Robert Hugill  Miracle in the Gorbals 18 Oct 2014 Planet Hugill