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.

Hansel and Gretel in Newcastle - a bit like falling in love

Theatre Royal Newcastle

Author Gita Mistry
(c) 2017 Gita Mistry: all rights reserved

Scottish Ballet, Hansel and Gretel, Theatre Royal Newcastle, 3 Feb 2017

Ballet can be a bit like falling in love. Once in a while, you see a show that stands out.   You leave the theatre floating on a cloud.  You can't quite put your finger on why, especially if you have seen the ballet before, but somehow it is special.  That was how I felt last night after watching Scottish Ballet's Hansel and Gretel at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle.  I had seen Hansel and Gretel before in Glasgow on 21 Dec 2013 and had enjoyed it then (see Scottish Ballet's Hansel and Gretel 23 Dec 2016), but I loved last night's show so much more.

As the show has not yet been to London or, to the best of my knowledge and belief performed abroad by any other company, I shall describe it briefly for my readers. The story follows loosely the fairy tale as retold by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm but with some twists and refinements.  It is set not in medieval Germany but in a small Scottish town near a forest - Dunkeld perhaps or maybe Aberfeldy - in the nineteen fifties or sixties.  The period is set by the costumes.  Little girls in gym slips. The boys in short trousers,  The mums in headscarves and the dads in flat caps. Local toughs in denim jeans and leather jackets. An enormous fridge in a corner of Hansel and Gretel's home - entirely bare except for cans of lager - some basic furniture and a massive telly.

Why did Christopher Hampson set his ballet in post-war Scotland which was well before his time let alone that of most of his audience? Part of the answer may be that Scottish Ballet and indeed Western Theatre Ballet before it has always been topical.  A tradition started by its founder Peter Darrell who staged the marvellous Mods and Rockers to Beatles music in 1963. The story begins with child abductions which of course is the subject of historical child abuse investigations and trials that were taking place in 2013 when Hansel and Gretel first appeared and, unfortunately, are still continuing today.

Hansel and Gretel are kept away from school until those abductions end.  Not surprisingly, they get bored with each other's company.  They slip away while their parents doze in from of the TV, first into the town and then the woods where eventually they find the witch's cottage.  Everything else follows the Grimms' story. They enter the cottage and find a table heaving with food with dancing chefs who come out from below.  The witch plies the kids with goodies, but then things start to go wrong. She chops off the head of Hänsel's teddy. She forces the children to play a game of hide and seek which ends with Hänsel finding himself in a cage under the table. Her malevolence becomes clear when she tosses the remains of the teddy into a cupboard overflowing with children's toys including two enormous rag dolls danced by Andrew Peasgood and Madeline Squire.

Happily, the story ends well - or fairly well for I can't be the only one who would prefer to see the witch in the dock than in the Aga - but at least the children (including those abducted in the prologue) are saved and reunited with their parents. A pile of bones reminds us not to feel too sorry for the witch who maybe had what was coming to her. Hänsel and Gretel are hoisted on the adults' shoulders and the children and parents parade triumphantly around the witch's kitchen.

The score is essentially Engelbert Humperdinck's as arranged by Richard Honner. The sets are by Gary Harris.  There are two excellent videos in which each member of the creative team explains how they brought the show together (see Scottish Ballet: The Making of Hansel & Gretel (Part One) and (Part Two).  Masestro Honner conducted the orchestra last night.

As I noted three years ago, there are some really juicy roles in this ballet. Hänsel and Gretel, of course, with Gretel taking the initiative but her impetuous brother the glory.  After all, it was he who kicked the old woman into the oven.  Yesterday Hänsel was danced by Constant Vigier (an up and coming choreographer as well as first artist with the company) and Kayla-Maree Tarantolo who trained in Amsterdam.  Gita likes to award "man" or "woman of the match" accolades to dancers as though they were cricketers. Her woman of the match was Tarantolo. I heard Gita giggling as the wide-eyed children gobbled the sweets or the witch hobbled about her kitchen. Now Gita just doesn't usually laugh in ballet but she was having a great time in this one.  "I am really enjoying it" she mouthed to me several times.

 Probably the most demanding role in the ballet is the witch because she mixes so many roles.  As I said in  2013 the teacher morphs into the local vamp, the ballerina in the moon and finally a wicked and twisted, ugly old witch. In The Making of Hansel and Gretel  Hampson says that he created that role for Eve Mutso who is a splendid dancer. Difficult shoes to fill but Grace Horler rose to the challenge and performed that role brilliantly. Indeed, she made it her own. The antithesis of the witch is, of course, the good fairy - in this case the Dew Drop Fairy - and she was danced delightfully by Claire Souet. Hansel and Gretel's mum and dad were danced by two of my favourites, Araminta Wraith and Christopher Harrison. They also have to morph from the everyday into the sublime as the children imagine them in evening dress dancing in high society. There is a sleek and sinister sandman danced by Peasgood last night and, of course, the menacing ravens - Rimbaud PatronHenry Dowden, Thomas Edwards, Eado Turgeman and  Evan Loudon.

Hampson is a great hero of mine as I have repeated many times in this blog. I had heard him speak at Northern Ballet's symposium on narrative dance (see My Thoughts on Saturday Afternoon's Panel Discussion at Northern Ballet 21 June 2015) but until last night I had never actually met him. Gita bumped into him in the theatre lobby and, knowing my admiration for the man, held him in conversation until I appeared. However eloquent my reviews (if indeed they are) and tweets, there is nothing like telling the choreographer in person how much one enjoys his work. Especially after an outstanding performance like last night's.

Scottish Ballet's Hansel and Gretel

Scottish Ballet's Hansel and Gretel, Theatre Royal Glasgow, 21 Dec 2013

If you want to rework a well-known story so that it is fresh and contemporary but not gimmicky Scottish Ballet's Artistic Director, Christopher Hampson, shows how to do it.  Locating the first Act of The Nutcracker by the banks of the Thames or getting rid of the divertissements from Aurora's wedding in Sleeping Beauty seem to me to be changes for change sake.  Hampson, however, has produced a version of Hansel and Gretel set in the 1950s and 1960s that is a different from the Grimm brothers' story and Humperdinck's opera but still works very well.

The synopsis is the product of a remarkable exercise called Hansel & Gretel and Me which included creative writing and art competitions for adults and children and outdoor performances of scenes from the story. Those exercises, which lstarted in 2012, were carried out in conjunction with the National Library and National Galleries of Scotland, the Scotsman newspaper and other Scottish and local institutions.

Whether intended by the choreographer or not there were plenty of Scottish cues as the ballet unfolded.  Muriel Spark's Prime of Miss Jean Brodie came to mind as a new teacher who turned out to be the witch charmed the children and spirited them away.  Nesbit and Roper's Steamie as Hansel and Gretel's mother, hair in head scarf, cigarette in hand, shuffled back into the house and slumped on the sofa as her children hauled off her shoes and shod her with slippers. Even the music hall song "I belong to Glasgow" as pa returned with two of his cronies very much the worse the wear with Glasgow going round and round. Judging by the conversations in the Bar in the interval, the audience at the Theatre Royal picked up on all those allusions.

The story has created some really juicy roles.  First, there is the teacher who morphs into the local vamp, the ballerina in the moon and finally a wicked and twisted, ugly old witch.  Next there are the parents who shed their everyday existence to perform a glamorous pas de deux in the children's dreams.  There are Hansel and Gretel themselves not to mention lots of ravens, chefs and fairies.   Because the theatre management distributed cast lists dated the 18 December instead of the 21 and as I am not yet sufficiently familiar with the company to recognize the dancers on stage I cannot be sure who danced those roles.  According to that cast list Marge Hendrick danced the witch, Christopher Harrison and Luciana Ravizzi the parents, Constant Vigier Hansel and Sophie Martin Gretel. If that cast list is right Hendrick danced impressively, especially as she is still listed in the corps on the company's website.

Although the score was composed by Engelbert Humperdinck it includes extracts from his other works as well as his opera. The fascinating story of how Richard Honner, the Principal Conductor, compiled and orchestrated a ballet score is set out in the programme in an article by Graeme Virtue.

Gary Harris's sets which had to transport us from Hansel and Gretel's home to a city street, the enchanted forest, the imaginary feast and finally the interior of the witch's gingerbread house were ingenious. The fridge which opened to reveal a solitary beer can anchored the ballet in the late 1950s or early 1960s.  An impression reinforced by the mother's pinny and headscarf and Hansel's shorts with braces and open neck shirt.

Brilliantly conceived, brilliantly orchestrated, brilliantly designed and brilliantly danced my only fear is that it will spoil me for the next ballet that I shall see which will be Northern Ballet's Cinderella at the Grand on Boxing Day. I hope not for as a Friend and as a member of the over 55 class of its Academy I feel part of that company and love it dearly. But I have followed Scottish Ballet ever since it was in Bristol and I got to know it well when it first moved to Glasgow (see Scottish Ballet 20 Dec 2013). Scottish Ballet was my first love and they say that one's first love is always the greatest. Having seen Hansel and Gretel my love for Scottish Ballet has been rekindled.

Hansel and Gretel will stay at Glasgow until this Saturday. It will then move to Edinburgh (8 to 11 Jan 2014), Aberdeen (15 - 18 Jan 2014), Inverness (22 - 25 Jan 2014), Newcastle (29 Jan - 1 Feb 2014) and Belfast (5 - 8 Feb 2014). If you live anywhere near those towns do go to see it.  Although no plans to bring it anywhere else have been published, I hope the company will dance Hansel and Gretel to London or, better still from my point of view, Leeds and Manchester.

Post Script

Andrew Cameron, Customer Services Manager of the Theatre Royal, has just emailed me the cast list for the performance on 21 Dec 2013 which I have just reviewed.

CAST

Hansel Andrew Peasgood

Gretel Bethany Kingsley-Garner

Witch Luciana Ravizzi

Mother Eve Mutso

Father Erik Cavallari

Sandman Christopher Harrison

Ravens Daniel Davidson, Rimbaud Patron, Thomas Edwards

Chefs Nicholas Shoesmith, Thomas Kendall

Dew Drop Fairy Constance Devernay

Rag Dolls Sophie Laplane, Jamiel Laurence

Waiters, Waitresses,

Fairy Attendants, Sweet Treats

and other characters: Artists of Scottish Ballet

Conductor Richard Honner