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Scottish Ballet Coppelia Theatre Royal, Glasgow 25 May 2022 19:30

Scottish Ballet has specialized in reinterpreting the classical repertoire ever since Peter Darrell's Beauty and the Beast.   Sometimes it has been spectacularly successful, as with David Dawson's Swan Lake or Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling. Others such as Krzysztof Pastor's Romeo and Juliet less so.  Despite excellent performances by Rishan Benjamin as Swanhilda and Thomas Edwards as Dr Coppelius which saved my evening, I regret to say that Morgann Runacre-Temple and Jessica Wright's  Coppelia did not work for me.

Coppelia is not a story that needs to be reworked.  It is basically Pygmalion which has fascinated human beings since classical times. Ted Brandsen has set it in modern dress but kept the story intact in his  Coppelia.  As my readers will gather from the synopsis, Runacre-Temple and Wright have transplanted Dr Coppelius to Silicon Valley.  Instead of an eccentric old codger with a workshop full of automatons, Coppelisu is the founder and CEO of the sinister startup NuLife.

The conventional Coppelia would not have retained its popularity for more than 150 years had it focused on Dr Coppelis's experiments.  Audiences like the lovely mazurkas of the first act, the humour of the village girls' overtures to Dr Coppelius's doll. Swanhilda's increasing exasperation with Franz as he flirts with the doll, the mugging where Dr Coppelius loses his house keys, the break-in by Swanhilda and her girlfriends to the workshop, the girls' nervousness, the cacophony when Swnhilda sets off the toys as she makes her escape, the charming dance of the hours of the last act and of course a delightful pas de deux at the end.

There is none of that in Runacre-Temple and Wright's work.  It was essentially about Coppelius and his interview with pant-suited investigative journalist Swanhilda,   A voice-over asks Coppelius how he deals with his critics.   "Do I have any?" asked another voice which made me smile as I was already thinking about this review.  There were lots of lights and screen images, a percussive score with the occasional echo of Delibes and snatches of dialogue such as "This table does not exist."  Everything was packed into a single 80-minute act.  Altogether. I found it heavy going.

Now I have to say out of fairness that most of the audience seemed to love the show.  There was a standing ovation which was the first I have ever seen in Scotland.  But it was not a simultaneous rising as I had seen in Leeds the previous week but a phased one like the opening night of Akram Khan's Giselle or at the Lowry after Sir Matthew Bourne's Romeo and Juliet.  In a phased standing ovation unlike a spontaneous one, audience members rise to their feet because others have done so and they feel they should or maybe they just want to see the stage at the curtain call,  

Now I want to end my review on a positive note because I have followed Scottish Ballet ever since they were in Bristol and I love them to bits.   This was the first time I had seen them live since lockdown and I had been looking forward to the show for weeks.  For me, the evening was saved by Benjamin and Edwards.  Particularly Benjamin.  This was the first time I had noticed her. She is still listed simply as an "artist".  I am not sure when she joined the company but I think her future is bright.  She reminds me a lot of Michaela DePrince.  She commands the stage in much the same way. 

There were good performances from Evan Loudon who danced Franz and Amy McEntee, Xolisweh Richards. Roseanna Leney, Noa Barry,  Urara Takata, Grace Horler, Melissa Parsons, Aisling Brangan, Hannah Cubitt, Nicholas Vavrecka,, Rimbaud Patron, James Garrington, Harvey Evans, Andrea Azzari., Ben Thomas, Ishan Mahabir-Stokes. Joel Wright and Jamie Reid as lab technicians. Franz was not quite the same role as in the conventional Coppelia.  Reed was also the cameraman.

As I said above I don't think it is necessary to update Coppelia because the challenge of artificial intelligence has existed since 1870 if not from the ancient Greeks.  However, if Scottish Ballet wants to modernize that gorgeous work it need look no further than one of its own board members.