Hampson's Masterpiece: The Snow Queen

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Scottish Ballet The Snow Queen Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 11 Jan 2020

I have been following the company now known as Scottish Ballet for nearly 60 years. The first ballet of theirs I can remember is Peter Darrell's Mods and Rockers which was quite unlike any ballet that I had ever seen before. It has staged some great works since such as Darrell's version of The Nutcracker, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa A Streetcar Named Desire, Christopher Hampson's Cinderella and David Dawson's Swan Lake. However, as I tweeted immediately after seeing the show, The Snow Queen is its creator's best work yet and one of the company's best ever,

@HampsonChris, great to run into you at @GlasgowKings yesterday. Congratulations to you, the cast, creatives and all at @scottishballet on #SBSnowQueen. I think this is your best work yet and one of the company's finest ever. Already a fan of Wraith, Loudon, Horler & now Addison.

— Terpsichore (@jelterps) January 12, 2020

The ballet is based loosely on Hans Christian Andersen's tale. Hampson inserts a prologue to explain the Snow Queen's meanness. That is permissible just as the spurning of her stepsister's flowers in Christopher Wheeldon's Cinderella is permissible to explain the girls' dislike of Cinderella.   The score is an arrangement of Rimsky Korsakov by Richard Honner. The designs which were breathtaking were created by Lez Brotherson. A work by Brotherson, Hampson and Honner could hardly fail and I had high hopes for it but it exceeded my expectations greatly.

Hampson's libretto creates three big female roles as well as some interesting supporting ones.  There is the Snow Queen herself who features strongly at the start and end.  Her sister is the Summer Princess.  While the siblings live together, all is harmony but when the Summer Princess sets off to explore the world the personality of the Snow Queen changes.  She becomes disorientated, resentful and vindictive.  Her sister disguises herself and calls herself Lexi as she scours the world for Kai.  Her rival for his affection is Gerda.  Kai is the lead male role but there are also solo roles for the men such as the ringmaster, strong man, clowns and bandit leader as well as bandits and townsfolk for male members of the corps. 

The Snow Queen was danced by guest artist, Katlyn Addison, a first soloist with the American Ballet West which is based in Salt Lake City, Utah and not to be confused with the school and company of the same name at Taynuilt in Argyll.  The Summer Princess or Lexi was danced by Grace Horler. and Gerda by Araminta Wraith.  Horler and Wraith I had seen before and were already favourites of mine. Particularly Wraith who had impressed me in character roles such as Cinderella's stepmother and Hansel and Gretel's mum as well as for her classical technique in what I think must have been The Nutcracker not too long after she had joined the company.  This was the first time I had seen Addison and I sincerely hope it will not be the last.  I have made a mental note to include Salt Lake City in my itinerary for a future holiday in America. 

Kai was danced by Evan Loudon who first impressed me in the Emergence and MC 14/22 double bill at Sadler's Wells in 2017.  Kai is a complex character combining the most attractive masculine attributes with the most infuriating.  An accomplished dance actor, Loudon discharged that role with flair.  Other dancers I noted immediately after the performance include Nicolas Shoesmith who was the ringmaster and Rimbaud Patron as the bandit leader.  All danced well and all are to be congratulated.   So, too, are the orchestra and their conductor Jean-Claude Picard. 

 The Scots have an onomatopoeic adjective for miserable weather - dreich.  The evening of 11 Jan was as dreich a night in Glasgow as ever there could be.  The thunderous applause from an audience that had already been drenched to the skin and chilled to the bone says it all.

Red Shoes Bourne Again

Sir Matthew Bourne

(c) 2006 New Adventures
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New Adventures The Red Shoes The Lowry, 2 Dec 2016


I have come a long way in my appreciation of Sir Matthew Bourne since I wrote: "Why can't I be nicer to Matthew Bourne?" 5 April 2013. That was the headline of my review of Sir Matthew's Sleeping Beauty which I described as very, very clever but perhaps too clever by half. I could see its merits but I didn't really like it. I think it was Baby Aurora scaling the curtain very early in the performance that drove me up the wall. Not even a sterling performance by Christopher Marney whom I have always admired as Count Lilac could mollify me.

I had mellowed a little by the time I saw Bourne's Swan Lake nearly a year later.  In Swan Lads - Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Bradford Alhambra 4 March 2014 5 March 2016 I wrote:

"When I reviewed Bourne's Sleeping Beauty on 6 April 2013 I asked "Why can't I be nicer to Matthew Bourne?" Well, this time I think I can."

I still had reservations but there was much to like from the re-working of Tchaikowsky's music to the kiss that the prince gave a bag lady at the end of act 1. I was so glad I could be nicer Matthew Bourne because he deserved some praise.

I was even more positive about The Car Man which I saw in Sheffield on 24 June 2015.  I wrote in Motoring  25 June 2015:

"Matthew Bourne has never been quite my cup of tea but that does not stop my recognizing quality when I see it. Last night at the Sheffield Lyceum we had quality in spades. Quality in Lez Brotherson's designs. Quality in Terry Davies's score which incorporates Bizet and builds on it. Quality in the dancing including an impressive first performance by Tim Hodges in the role of Luca. Above all, quality in choreography by Matthew Bourne. The Car Man is the best production by New Adventures that I have seen to date."

Bourne read the review and tweeted:

@jelterps Sounds like your taste in tea may be changing? Thank you for your honesty and fair reporting. Appreciate it

— Sir Matthew Bourne (@Mattbourne1) June 25, 2015

I replied that I had always valued his work just as I esteem Lapsang Souchong or Darjeeling but I still prefer good old Yorkshire tea and milk. Bourne responded that we sounded more similar than I thought. He added "I enjoy the variety in my tea too! Spice of life! Thx again."  He started to follow me on twitter and has commented more than once on articles in this blog proving that he reads it occasionally.

Sir Matthew was in the audience last night when I saw The Red Shoes at The Lowry. He was actually a few seats from me in the stalls and my companion spotted him in the Pier Eight bar in the intermission. I thought about introducing myself to him:

"He actually reads my blog, you know." I said to my companion. "We had over 13,000 page hits last month which may be as many as readers as the critics get in the qualities."

"I think you should," she said and so I did.

From the tone of his voice, I doubt that he could place me when I told him who I was;  but he could not have been more courteous or charming. He asked me whether I was enjoying the show and I was very glad to be able to reply that I was.

For if I hadn't I would have told him and this review would have been dripping with vitriol rather than unguents.  I grew up with The Red Shoes  and love it more than any other film. If I thought anyone was taking liberties with it I would have defended it with all the fury of a tigress protecting her young. In fact, I wanted Bourne that I would in my preview Red Shoes Rebounding 22 Nov 2016:

"I love this film and I think Sir Matthew must do so too. If he has done a good job in transposing it to the stage I shall be deliriously happy and will never say an unkind word about him again. But if I find that he has mucked it up ...................."

Happily, Sir Matthew did not muck it up. He honoured that film and its actors by making something that is at least as beautiful.  In the programme notes Bourne said:

"I have loved this film since I was a teenager with its depiction of a group of people all passionate about creating something magic and beautiful. It seemed to be saying that art was something worth fighting for, even dying for, if the rather melodramatic conclusion is to be believed. It was a world full of glamour, romance and creativity populated by larger than life personalities. In short it was a world I wanted to be part of." 

Although I drew precisely the opposite conclusion, I have always loved the story, the glamour and romance. For me. it is a love story plunged into tragedy by the obduracy of the impresario, Lermontov. and. to a lesser extent, the young composer, Craster.

Sir Matthew follows the film pretty faithfully with just one significant change. Bourne shows Vicky walking out in solidarity with Julian when he is sacked by Lermontov and she is reduced to working in an East End music hall. That did not happen in the film and it would not have happened in real life for ballet had a massive and growing audience in Britain immediately after the second world war as David Bintley reminds us in Dancing in the Blitz: How World War II made British Ballet. However, it fitted the story well and gave Terry Davies an excellent opportunity to incorporate Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road into the score.

Yesterday Cordelia Braithwaite danced Vicky Page. She looked like Moira Shearer and she moved uncannily like Shearer. I can't imagine a better fit.  Chris Trenrtfield made a convincing Craster. In some ways, I thought he was better cast than Marius Goring had been in the same role in the film. Sam Archer was an impressive Lermontov.  Grischa was danced by Glenn Graham and he reminded me very much of Leonide Massine who performed that role in the film.

Lez Brotherson's sets and costumes were magnificent as they always are. They transported us to a lost world of smoking jackets, steam trains and music halls - one that possibly existed during my lifetime but which now seems to be as remote as any in history.  I loved the score and its orchestration as well as the choreographic interpretation.  The duet between Victoria and Craster in their London flat when they decide to return to Monte Carlo was particularly poignant.

This is a splendid production and in my opinion Sir Matthew's masterpiece. I can't see how he can improve on or surpass this work - but, with Sir Matthew, you never know. He is after all the nearest we have to a Diaghilev in our times.

Red Shoes Rebounding

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Just over a year ago the BBC made the film The Red Shoes available on the iPlayer. I watched it and reviewed it in The Red Shoes 15 Nov 2015. Today a new stage version of The Red Shoes created by Sir Matthew Bourne opened in Plymouth.

The production's second port of call will be The Lowry and there will certainly be a review from there. Bourne has acquired a new score from Terry Davies and Lez Brotherson has created the designs. The young ballerina, Vicky Page, who was played by Moira Shearer in the film will be danced by Cordelia Braithwaite and the young composer Julian Craster who was played by Marius Goring will be danced by Dominic North.

If you have never seen the film the plot is summarized in Wikipedia.  Although the complete ballet has been removed from the BBC's website there are fragments of the ballet scenes on YouTube There is also this beautiful trailer which I can't resist displaying:


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Also, you can still review Deborah Bull's talk which I mentioned in my previous article (see  The Red Shoes The Essay,Praising Powell and Pressburger BBC).

I love this film and I think Sir Matthew must do so too.  If he has done a good job in transposing it to the stage I shall be deliriously happy and will never say an unkind word about him again.  But if I find that he has mucked it up ....................

We will all know soon enough.

Postscript 25 Nov 2016

We now have some reviews.

Press

Roger Malone Review: Matthew Bourne's The Red Shoes at the Theatre Royal Plymouth 24 Nov 2016 Plymouth Herald

David Marston Review: The Red Shoes at Plymouth Theatre Royal 23 Nov 2016 Exeter Express & Echo

Blog
Ellie Mae  THE RED SHOES BY MATTHEW BOURNE WORLD PREMIERE REVIEW | LITTLEELLIEMAE 22 Nov 2016 Little Ellie Mae

BalletcoForum

Friends attended the opening night in Plymouth and seems to have enjoyed it very much.  You can find that subscriber's report here.

Motoring

Oldsmobile sedan from the 1950s

Author Sigmund

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Matthew Bourne's The Car Man Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, 24 June 2015

Matthew Bourne has never been quite my cup of tea but that does not stop my recognizing quality when I see it. Last night at the Sheffield Lyceum we had quality in spades. Quality in Lez Brotherson's designs. Quality in Terry Davies's score which incorporates Bizet and builds on it. Quality in the dancing including an impressive first performance by Tim Hodges in the role of Luca. Above all, quality in choreography by Matthew Bourne. The Car Man is the best production by New Adventures that I have seen to date.

Although it is described on the cover of the programme as "Bizet's Carmen re-imagined" it is actually a very ingenious and original work. It is set not outside a cigarette factory in 19th century Seville but in small town America of the 1950s. This was a time when women wore full skirted dresses of bright fabrics and elaborate hair styles that billowed in the dance. It was a time when Oldsmobiles and Studebakers were as capacious and majestic as ocean liners.

There is no Carmen in The Car Man but there is Luca. He seduces Angelo (Liam Mower) who is the nearest we get to Don Jose. He is a slightly built, bookish, inoffensive and slightly effeminate youth who works for Dino (Alan Vincent) in his garage. Dino employs most of the young men in the cast as mechanics and his wife Lana (Ashley Shaw) and his sister in law, Rita (Katy Lowenhoff) in his bar. The mechanics rag Angelo mercilessly. Only Luca takes his part teaching him how to use his fists as well as making advances towards him. However, Luca proves a false friend. He gets into a fight with Dino after making love to Lana. He wounds Dino fatally leaving Angelo to take the blame. Angelo is arrested and attacked in custody by a warder (Dan Wright). No doubt having been toughened by his imprisonment Angelo overpowers his attacker and escapes from prison with the warder's pistol seeking revenge. The nearest we get to Michaela in The Car Man is sister Rita who sees the crime from the start and tries to right the injustice to Angelo.

Well it's a good, tight, robust story that works and if anyone in Leeds who attended last Saturday's narrative dance perambulation (see My Thoughts on Saturday Afternoon's Panel Discussion at Northern Ballet 21 June 2015) remains in doubt as to what is meant by narrative dance he or she need only take the motorway to Sheffield. This is not ballet as such but it is dance that takes place in a theatre which for most theatre goers is all that matters. It is dramatic. It is exciting. It is spectacular. It is fun.

This company has devoted followers who leapt to their feet and practically whooped the house down at the final curtain call. That never happens in ballet but it is no bad thing as it introduces new audiences to dance in a way that no amount of midscale tours and live screenings from London or Moscow will achieve in a month of Sundays. As I said in the first paragraph this genre is not exactly my cup of tea (and despire an impressive performance it still isn't) but that does not stop me from appreciating it.

Other Reviews

Roslyn Sulcas  Review: Suspense and Charisma in ‘The Car Man’ in London  23 July 2015

Like meeting an old friend after so many years

Scottish Ballet's The Nutcracker Festival Theatre, Edinburgh 3 Jan 2015


I'd been looking forward to seeing Peter Darrell's version of The Nutcracker all year. It's dangerous to set your heart on something that much because high expectations are rarely satisfied. But from the moment Richard Horner raised his hands it was pure delight. Like meeting an old university friend half a century on.

And in a sense that was just what it was. I was introduced to Scottish Ballet by John Steer in 1969 (see Scottish Ballet 20 Dec 2013). Darrell died in 1987 (Peter Darrell 9 March 2014) and I cannot recall when I last saw one of his ballets. Tonight I was reminded of Darrell's brilliance.  It was one of the reasons I fell in love with Scottish Ballet and why the company continues to occupy a special place in my affections.

Darrell's Nutcracker is of the traditional kind. Clara remains a child unlike the Eagling and Grigorovich versions (see The Nutcracker reference page and my reviews of Cracking! 14 Dec 2013 and Clara grows up- Grigorovitch's Nutcracker transmitted directly from Moscow 21 Dec 2014), She does not morph into the sugar plum. There are no gimmicky balloons, flying boats or expanding Christmas trees. Above all there has been no attempt to shift the location of the ballet from Hoffmann's original location to the banks of the Thames or even The Neva.

But there are some interesting features. In the prologue Drosselmeyer transformed an urchin into a handsome youth. Clara's troublesome little brother Fritz was given a toy rat for Christmas with which he tormented the women folk foretelling the battle between rodents and toy soldiers. The mice are children - girls as well as boys. The struggle was short and sweet and the nutcracker despatched the rat king without any help from Clara. One of the divertissements is a hornpipe reminiscent of Pineapple Poll danced to music that I cannot recall hearing before. Best of all were two great monkeys who parked themselves either side of Clara. They amused the crowd with antics that would not be encouraged in the drawing rooms of Morningside or Bearsden.

My seat was in the centre of the first row with a full view of the orchestra pit. I had never been so close to an orchestra before. I could see every movement of every player which was almost as fascinating as the ballet. I watched them in the "la la" vocals snow flake scene to see whether they had a choir as Festival once did. I thought I saw the woodwind players mouth the tune but I think Horner must have used a previous recording.

As advertised Erik Cavallari danced the nutcracker, Bethany Kingsley-Garner the sugar plum, Owen Thorne Drosselmeyer, Amy Pollock Clara and Remi Anderson as King Rat but Eve Mutso was the snow queen. All danced well but in many ways the biggest stars were the children from Scottish Ballet Associates and the Dance School of Scotland who showed considerable stage presence as well as good technique. Amy Pollok was a great Clara. The other big star was the designer Lez Brotherston who created a gorgeous kingdom of the sweets out of Christmas tree baubles and barricades for the mice out of outsize apple cores, boiled sweets and assorted cheeses.

The day I danced in public David Nixon stood next to me on the landing overlooking the foyer of Northern Ballet. The audience, which consisted largely of proud parents, siblings and friends of the dancers so was less than impartial, erupted in generous applause and emptied out of the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre chirping and chattering. "It's the best sound in the world" said Nixon. "They really enjoyed it". It was the same last night. The auditorium, which was packed to the gunwales, exploded with clapping and we stepped into Nicholson Street on a high. I've reviewed six productions of The Nutcracker since I started this blog and have enjoyed them all but this is the one I like best.

Swan Lads - Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Bradford Alhambra 4 March 2014

The swans in Matthew Bourne's 2005 Tour     Source Wikipedia

Last night I saw Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at the Bradford Alhambra. It was great entertainment: gripping drama, humour, spectacular choreography and powerful dancing. It is easy to see why this production won so many awards and ran and ran on Broadway and in the West End. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

When I reviewed Bourne's Sleeping Beauty on 6 April 2013 I asked "Why can't I be nicer to Matthew Bourne?" Well, this time I think I can. That does not mean to say that I don't have reservations about his work.  As I said last year:

"I have mixed feelings about Matthew Bourne. He has won so many awards. His ballets are dramatic. His choreography spectacular. I have seen Cinderella and Nutcracker as well as Sleeping Beauty. Two of those performances were at the Alhambra and the third was at the Wells. On each occasion the crowd went wild. And the crowd is part of the ballet. And yet...... The trouble is that one can sometimes be too clever by half and Matthew Bourne is very, very clever. He knows how to raise a laugh from the audience with the puppet baby Aurora. And then to make them shiver as she climbs the curtain. Brilliant! But is it ballet?"

Bourne's Swan Lake was even less like conventional ballet than his Sleeping Beauty with no tutus (except in a spoof romantic ballet with monsters and an axe-wielding maiden), hardly any (if any) dancing on pointe and no great ballerina roles but if ballet can be defined as dance drama there was plenty of that.

For those who have not yet seen the work there is a good synopsis in Wikipedia.  The fairy tale about a handsome prince falling in love with a princess under the spell of a wicked magician is jettisoned.  In its place is inserted a study of an insecure and unstable individual who is heir to his country's throne but cannot quite live up to the responsibilities for which he is being groomed. He is briefly distracted by a brassy, flashy blonde who makes a thorough nuisance of herself in the royal box during the performance of the absurd ballet and later snubs him when he shows up in his underwear in the Swank (Swan + K get it?) bar. His mother, the queen, (a Volumnia type who places public duty before everything including her son) denies him any signs of affection.  Haunted by nightmares of menacing swans who first show him love and then molest him he eventually flips.  He produces a pistol, shoots at everybody in sight, is committed to a secure hospital where he receives something like convulsive electric shock treatment and after more nightmare images of molesting swans he eventually dies. With its corgi on wheels it was the best propaganda for republicanism since the days of Cromwell. It is perhaps no coincidence that the ballet was first staged in 1995 just a few years after so called annus horibilis.

According to a notice board in the foyer of the theatre, the prince was danced by Liam Mower, the swan by Chris Trenfield, the queen by Saranne Curtin and the brassy flashy blonde by Anjali Mehra. I am not sure how accurate that was because the photos in the programme seem a little different from the faces I saw on stage (albeit from a distance and some height) and there was no cast list but whoever danced those roles last night did an excellent job. Growing up as I did in Molesey by the Thames I have no illusions about swans. Nasty hissing brutes that chased small dogs and indeed small boys they had far more in common with Matthew Bourne's boys in feathery breeches than with the sweet teenage girls of Ballet West last Saturday (see "Swan Loch - Ballet West's Swan Lake, Pitlochry 1 March 2014" 3 March 2014) or even Wayne Sleep's in his Big Ballet (see  "No Excuses! If the Dancers in Big Ballet can do it so can I" 21 Feb 2014).

There were two other stars of this ballet, Lez Brotherston who designed the sets and costumed. I was amazed how he transformed the prince's bed into a balcony from where the prince and queen acknowledged the cheers of the adoring crowds. Gently teasing the Bradford audience he dressed the brassy, flashy blonde in a pink dress that was very similar to several outfits that I spotted in the theatre bar. Clearly the blonde was cast as a "Brat-ford" lass. It is no wonder that she raised a massive cheer when she took her bow. The other star creative was Rick Fisher who arranged the lighting. The enormous shadows of the clinicians in the hospital and the swans in the last two scenes were striking and frightening.

There was so much in this ballet that I liked - the way Bourne reworked some of the familiar old tunes like the music to the 32 fouettés and the divertissements, the kiss that the prince gave to a bag lady who had come to feed the swans as the curtain fell on Act II - I am so glad I can be nicer to Matthew Bourne. He deserves some praise.