Cinders in Sunderland

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Birmingham Royal Ballet Cinderella Sunderland Empire 15 Mar 2025 14:00 

Between 6 Feb and 12 Apr 2025, the Birmingham Royal Ballet took Sir David Bintley's Cinderella on a nationwide tour.  I caught it at the Sunderland Empire on 15 March 2025.  I had already reviewed it in Bintley's Best on 2 Mar 2017.  I wrote in that article that I liked everything that I had seen of Bintley's work, but I thought Cinderella was the best.  That is still my view now. 

The reason I admire the ballet so much is that it tells the Grimm brothers' story (with a few variations) through Bintley's spectacular choreography to Prokofiev's beautiful music with John Macfarlane's sumptuous designs and David Finn's ingenious lighting. The Cinderella Relaxed Performance YouTube video is a good introduction to and overview of the ballet.   In Cinderella: An Interview with Sir David Bintley. Sir David confirms Mark Monahan's programme notes that Sir David agreed to create the ballet if Macfarlane agreed to do the designs. Monahan reports: "Lo and behold, John said yes."  Readers will recall that Macfarlane designed Liam Scarlett's Swan Lake, a recording of which I mentioned in Swan Lake at the Leeds Showcase on 30 May 2025.  The importance of those designs is explained in Cinderella: John Macfarlane's Designs.

In his programme notes, Mark Monahan observed that many choreographers had created versions of Cinderella, but it was Sir Frederick Ashton's for the Royal Ballet that "cast the longest shadow". It was important to Bintley that his company's Cinderella should be distinctive.  One important difference is that Bintley's stepsisters are danced by two young women, whereas Sir Frederick and Sir Robert Helpmann danced the stepsisters in the tradition of the English pantomime dame. As the stepsisters' video shows, those young women were quite beastly to Cinderella and, sometimes, even to each other. Ashton and Helpmann were absurd but far from menacing.  Bintley retained the fairy godmother, tradesmen and seasonal fairies (or at least the seasons) in his ballet, introducing also a frog coachman and lizard attendants.

Beatrice Parma danced the title role with flair and grace.  One of the most satisfying moments in the show is when she momentarily turned on her tormentors with a broom.  Others were, of course, her arrival at the ball, her duet with the prince, her producing the missing slipper and her final dance with the prince. Enrique Bejarano Vidal was an impressive prince with his sweeping lifts and powerful jumps.  Isabella Howard was a dazzling fairy godmother.  Having seen Oscar Kempsey-Fagg at An Evening with Ashton on 24 Jan 2023 in Elmhurst Ballet School, which I discussed in An "Evening with Ashton" and the Launch of an English Junior Company on 30 Jan 2023, it is good to see his progress in the company.

Sunderland has a beautiful Edwardian theatre capable of accommodating an audience of 2,200.  It was opened by Vesta Tilly in 1907.  It has a massive stage and excellent acoustics.  It is said to be haunted by the ghosts of Sid James and Vesta Tilly.  Neither spectre appeared on my visit.   Sunderland has a population of just over 277,000.  It used to be known for shipbuilding.  Nowadays, it is better known for making Nissan cars.   It has a university, a football club and beaches.

Plato's Cave - the Live Transmission of the Royal Ballet's Swan Lake

Plato's Cave

Author Jan Sanraedam according to Cornelos van Harlaam

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Royal Ballet Swan Lake 12 June 2018 Live streaming to cinemas worldwide from Covent Garden

I was lucky enough to see the Royal Ballet's Swan Lake from the stalls of the Royal Opera House on 22 May 2018 and reviewed the performance in Scarlett's Swan Lake 23 May 2018. I saw it again last Tuesday at the Leeds Showcase against my better judgment and really wish I hadn't.

In Flowers for Dreda 9 June 2018 I wrote that ballet should never be a passive experience and that is the difference between watching ballet in the cinema and watching it live. You can marvel at Legnani's 32 fouettés from your local flicks just as much as you can in the theatre. Arguably you can even get a better view.  Certainly more than you would in rows L to Q of the amphitheatre. But however loudly you clap or cheer Nuñez or Nikulina can't hear you.  They are 200 or in the case of the Bolshoi 1,500 miles away and their dialogue is with the living, breathing, thinking audience a few feet away.  Not the hot dog munchers or cola quaffers of Birstall, Bergen or Brescia.

There are some advantages to ballet in the cinema.

You can see details that you might want to see such as the dancer's facial expressions, Rothbart's picking up the crown at the end of act III or Odette's mime in act IV when she breaks the news that they have to spend the rest of their lives floating around a slimy pond because Siegfried has blown it. On the other hand you also see some details that you don't like the brush strokes or bricks on the backdrop or loose threads on the costumes.

The other big advantage of cinema is that audiences can gain insight into the production or performance that they would never get in the theatre by interviewing the choreographers, composers or designers who created the work or the conductors and dancers who are about to perform it.  Generally, that is something that Pathé  Live and the Bolshoi do so much better than Covent Garden. One of the reasons the Bolshoi get it right is that they employ a multilingual journalist with good dress sense and an excellent knowledge of the ballet.

One feature of the Royal Ballet's transmissions that I wish they would drop are the gushing tweets.  Most seem to state the obvious - namely that ballet is a remarkable spectacle (it wouldn't be worth watching otherwise) plus their locations. Social media could have a role.  For example, it could be used to put questions to the creatives. I would love to have quizzed Liam Scarlett on why and how he developed  von Rothbart's role.  Covent Garden just seem to use it as a marketing tool or perhaps just simple vanity.

In watching the cinema transmission I was reminded of the story of Plato's cave.

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I first heard of it from my father long before I started to learn Greek.  Live transmissions of ballet are rather like the shadows of reality from the fire in the cave.  They may be better than nothing and they have their place but don't let anyone tell you that they are ballet because they are not. The analogy works quite well with live transmissions because some things that look good in the theatre just so not show up well on screen. John Macfarlane's designs are a case in point.  The screen images did not do justice to them.

I expressed these views on a ballet goers' website some years ago and got roasted. I was accused of elitism by a lady who makes her living from translating foreign  language patent specifications and was excoriated a man of the cloth.  I was reminded of the fate of the man who broke free of the cave and tried to warn the remaining troglodytes and gave that website a miss for many years. I am now very careful about what I post to that website confining myself to reviews of performances that most subscribers would not have seen lest I be offered a pint of hemlock.

The Good Nutcracker Guide

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Those who like The Nutcracker have a choice of three versions this year since all three of our flagship companies are staging the ballet this Christmas. The Royal Ballet and the Birmingham Royal Ballet offer their own versions of Sir Peter Wright's production in London and Birmingham respectively while English National will tour with Wayne Eagling's.

My first choice is the Royal Ballet's. I prefer the story where the fight between the mice and toy soldiers is confined to a dream in Act I and Act II is one great divertissement.  In Wayne Eagling's the battle is central to the story and continues into Act II as the mouse king follows Clara and Drosselmeyer by grasping the gondola of their balloon. In the Dutch National Ballet's version, which is also by Eagling and most recently performed last year, the work is actually called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.   I suppose it becomes a sort of metaphor for the struggle between good and evil.  Another big difference between Wright's versions and Eagling's is that Clara morphs into the Sugar Plum in the latter.

There are some differences between the Birmingham and London versions of Wright's ballet. The Royal Ballet's designs are by Julia Trevelyan Oman whereas BRB's are by John Macfarlane. There are also differences between Eagling's versions for the Dutch and English National Ballets in that ENB's designs are by Peter Farmer whereas Het's are  by Toer van Schayk. However, van Schayk influences the choreography of the English version.

Audiences who want to see the Royal Ballet can catch it at Covent Garden between the 23 Nov and 12 Jan 2017. It will also be streamed to cinemas throughout the UK and the rest of the world on 8 Dec 2016. BRB's will run from 25 Nov 2016 to 13 Dec 2015 at the Birmingham Hippodrome. English National's will start in Milton Keynes between 23 and 26 Nov 2016, proceed to the Liverpool Empire between 29 Nov and 3 Dec 2016, and finish its run at the Coliseum between 14 Dec and 7 Jan 2017. It will also be performed in Southampton between 29 Nov and 2 Dec 2017.

It has been some time since I last saw either of Sir Peter's versions because I could find no reviews in the archives of my blog but I can offer you a review of Eagling's for ENB from three years ago (see Cracking 14 Dec 2013). I remember that performance particularly because it was almost the last time that I saw Vadim Muntagirov and Daria Klimentova dance together. I have seen and reviewed several other versions since including the revival of Peter Darrell's for Scottish Ballet (see Like meeting an old friend after so many years 4 Jan 2015) and David Nixon's for Northern (see Northern Nutcracker 19 Dec 2015) but neither of those companies is running a version of The Nutcracker this year. There is also some background information on The Nutcracker on my resource page for the ballet which I really should update.

Rarely have I been so impressed by a new ballet

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Screening of the Royal Ballet's Frankenstein, 18 May 2016

I always look forward to my Wednesday evening ballet class at Northern Ballet or the University of Huddersfield and I have turned down invitations to posh receptions in order to attend one or other of those classes before now. Tonight, however, I skipped class to attend the screening of Liam Scarlett's Frankenstein.   I am very glad I did for rarely have I been more excited by a new ballet. I am metaphorically kicking myself for not getting a reasonably priced ticket in the amphitheatre stalls during the Friends' booking window when I had the chance. However, I did the next best thing by watching the HDTV transmission from Covent Garden in the National Media Museum in Bradford, which happens to be the home town of Thomas Whitehead who played a key role in last night's ballet.

As Darcey Bussell noted before the screening most of us know Frankenstein from Hollywood rather than Mary Shelley's novel and fail to appreciate its themes and subtleties. Scarlett has returned to the original in creating his ballet. Very briefly, a young medical student called Victor Frankenstein, grief stricken by the death of his mother in childbirth, becomes obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. In a neurology class in the anatomy theatre a lecturer applies Galvani's experiments with frog legs to human body parts and gets a limb to twitch after a  current is applied to the nerve ends.  That was possible with frogs but not with more advanced creatures at that time but never mind. That experiment gives Victor the idea that electricity is the life force. Instead of enjoying himself womanizing in the pub like all the other medical students he experiments with stitching together body parts and charging them with electricity. Eventually he succeeds in making a functioning composite cadaver which breaks out of the laboratory and terrorizes the public.

One of its victims is Victor's little brother who is left alone blindfolded for a few minutes by his family. The monster plays with him gently at first but the boy dies of shock on seeing the monster's gruesome form. The boy's body is found by his nurse, Justine, who is accused of murdering him. The second act ends with the poor woman dangling from the gallows which to my mind is the most disturbing scene of the show. In the last act Victor marries his sweetheart, Elizabeth, but the monster shows up at their wedding knocking off first Victor's father, then his best mate Henry and finally Elizabeth. Desperate at the loss of everyone he has ever loved in his life Victor shoots himself. The last scene shows the monster cradling its creator.

This is a tremendous work making enormous demands of every single role player in the story. I suppose the greatest demands are made of the monster danced last night by Steven McRae. "McRae as a monster", I hear you cry. "He's the last dancer I would cast in that role. Ed Watson perhaps or maybe Muntagirov, but McRae is such a sweet, sensitive young man." Well let me tell you, McRae does monsters and how. The make-up and wardrobe department performed a minor miracle in dressing him with horrid gory stitch marks across his face and body. He was as horrible as anything out of Hammer Films. But this was a sensitive monster who was looking for love first from the little boy, then Elizabeth and finally his creator. Not so very far off McRae's other roles I think you will agree.

Federico Bonelli danced Victor Frankenstein. I have long been a fan of this dancer but he rose even higher in my esteem as he developed his character on stage from lost little boy, to swotty undergraduate, obsessed researcher, young master, gentle suitor and in all stages of the ballet tortured soul. The other big male role was Henry who played all round good egg from the moment he befriended Victor in medical school. Like Victor he had no time for drinking, carousing and having a nice time like all other sensibly adjusted students. He was danced last night by Alexander Campbell, and a very good job he did too.

The main female role was Elizabeth danced last night by Laura Morera who was Scarlett's muse in Viscera (see Au Revoir but not Adieu 19 Nov 2015. I am a great fan of Morera and once had the pleasure of meeting her and telling her how much I admire her work (see Laura Morera 25 Aug 2015). She is a fine actor well as a great dancer. She is a master of detail - remember her little mannerisms as she writes in Victor's commonplace book as he is about to set off for medical school - but also her mid-air rotations as Victor tosses her into the air without really looking at her. It must have been so scary for her to do those turns.

"And Thomas Woodhead? You say he danced a key role." Why yes, indeed, for he was the lecturer who demonstrated the life giving force of electricity to the students and gave Victor the idea for his research. We have all taken classes from lecturers like him. Brilliant. Sarcastic. Frightening for the callow undergraduate. I was reminded of my economic history classes at St Andrews. "Karl Marx was born in 1818 and died - not a day before time - in 1883" delivered in the cultured tones of Morningside "where sex is what the coal comes in."

A ballet like this requires a remarkable score and it was provided by Lowell Liebermann. It was a work of our times - not a pastiche - but it caught the flavour of the period where that was needed. It was one of the most beautiful new works I have ever heard and I long to listen to it again perhaps next time in the concert hall. If anyone wants to get me a present for Christmas I'll have a recording of the score as soon as soon as it comes out on DVD.

Equally impressive were John MacFarlane's designs, particularly his apparatus for generating static electricity and the electrodes for applying it to humans. This was one of the most realistic props I have ever seen on stage in any kind of show.  And the gallows scene too which would have made me throw up had I visited the Kash before the show rather than after.

There is so much to write about this production but I have a living to earn and nobody pays me to write ballet reviews.  There are still some seats available for the last three performances in London. If you can make the show then go. It will soon be staged in San Francisco.  I'd say its worth the 9 hour flight if you miss it here and I am seriously contemplating a trip there.

Liam Scarlett is a remarkable talent. First, Vicera. then No Man's Land  and now this. He is still a very young man.  Imagine what he will be doing in 20 or 30 years time.