The Winter's Tale - Close to Perfection though perhaps not quite there yet

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The Royal Ballet  The Winter's Tale 15 Feb 2018, 19:30 Royal Opera House

I have now seen Christopher Wheeldon's The Winter's Tale three times on stage and at least twice on screen and it has definitely grown on me.  The first time I saw it I was less than overwhelmed.  I wrote in Royal Ballet The Winter's Tale 14 April 2014:

"I expected so much of The Winter's Tale. I had been looking forward to it for months. A new work by Christopher Wheeldon based on Shakespeare by a fine choreographer for our national company with a stellar cast. It should have blown me off my feet. Well I quite liked the show but blown off my feet? I wasn't."

I liked it a lot better when I saw it in the cinema a few weeks later (see The Winter's Tale - A Time to eat my Hat 29 April 2014) and even more when I saw it again in 2016 (see The Winter's Tale Revisited - Some Ballets are better Second Time Round 20 April 2016).

Thursday's performance was for me the best ever.  I tweeted:

Thoroughly enjoyed @TheRoyalBallet's Winter's Tale last night. Never seen Nunez, Soares, Stix-Brunnell and Bracewell dance better. My review will appear in https://t.co/1UvITcDv6f very soon. I have really grown to love that ballet over the last few years.

— Terpsichore (@jelterps) February 16, 2018

Yes, it is a lovely work - an uplifting story to a gorgeous score performed by some of the world's finest dancers in the grandest auditorium in England.  Pretty close to perfection.

Close to perfection but perhaps still not quite there.  I saw the ballet on Thursday with my friend Gita. She has seen a lot of ballet as well as other kinds of dance and attended a lot of adult ballet classes and even a few intensives. She watched the ballet with me on telly when it was broadcast one Christmas but this was the first time she had seen it on stage. Interestingly, her comments were very much the same as those that I had made in my first review. Fine choreography, great dancing, lovely music but the first act dragged a bit, the sets and especially the animations were distracting, she did not really get the bear and the ballet as a whole was far too long. Thinking about it again I couldn't say she is wrong but that does not mean that it is not a great work. On the contrary, I think it will keep its place in the repertoires of both the Royal Ballet and National Ballet of Canada and over the years it will evolve into something even better.  Especially if future producers do a bit of judicious pruning here and there,

Because it had been my birthday on Wednesday, Gita and I pushed the boat out a little.  We booked seats in the centre stalls close enough to see the expressions of the dancers but far enough back to take in the stage as a whole.  We dined in the Paul Hamlyn which meant that we could keep our table relax and reflect in the intervals. I have been to Covent Garden many times and it never fails to impress but to get the full the majesty of the place you have to sit in the stalls. Surrounded by red and gold, enveloped by light with the buzz of the audience I involuntarily squeaked with delight.

The lights dimmed and Kevin O'Hare entered the stage with the news that Alondra de la Parra was indisposed but Tom Seligman had stepped in to take her place.  Now Maestro Seligman is very good and he conducted confidently. So confidently in fact that he was already half way across the stage when the ballerina was about to invite him to take a bow and he was also the last performer to take a curtain call.  However, I had been looking forward to see Ms de la Parra. There are not many women conductors.  All those I have seen, such as Jane Glover and Marin Alsop, were extremely good. I have never seen a woman before an orchestra at Covent Garden and I would have been proud to see Ms de la Parra there. No doubt there will be other opportunities to see her and I wish her well.

I have seen Marianela Nuñez quite a few times over the years but I don't think I have ever seen dance better than her performance as Hermione on Thursday night. The same goes for Thiago Soares who danced Leontes, Beatriz Stix-Brunell as Perdita, William Bracewell as Polixenes,  Vadim Muntagirov as Florizel, Itziar Mendizabal as Paulina and Bradford lad, Thomas Whitehead, as the shepherd. Coming from Yorkshire, Gita and I applauded him particularly vigorously (as I always do) when he took his bow. Did he notice, I wonder?  Gita likes to choose a man or woman of the match. I can't remember whom she chose but the dancer who impressed me most on Thursday was Mendizabal. Paulina speaks truth to power but remains faithful to her awful boss and leads him back to his senses. She holds the show together. The role requires very careful casting and Mendizabal was the  right choice.

I loved the music, the choreography, the designs and special effects (except the bear) and the costumes (which, Gita said, showed Indian Sub-Continent influences). Once again I was close to tears at the final reunion of Perdita and her parents. Indeed the whole last act is a tear jerker. Yet again I loved the dancing round the tree.  Act 1 needs to be in the work to set the scene but I wish it were not quite so long.  Perhaps the last bit of act 1 could be added to the second act.  But these are minor niggles. Taken as a whole Thursday's performance was really good. If I did not have a ticket for the Dutch National Ballet's Don Quixote that evening I would see it again at the pictures when it is screened across the  world on the 28 Feb. If you can get to see it at least in the cinema but preferably on stage I strongly recommend it.

The Winter's Tale Revisited - Some Ballets are better Second Time Round

Antigonus and the Bear from The Winter's Tale 

Author: Thomas Bragg (printmaker)
Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection

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The Royal Ballet, The Winter's Tale, Royal Opera House, 16 April 2016

Sometimes a dish tastes better second time round. That may be because the meat has a chance to marinate. Or it may be because of a mood change. If you've set your heart on fish and chips and that's no longer on the menu nothing on earth is going to make you enjoy Yorkshire pudding and onion gravy in the same way however tasty that may be.

Theatre can be a bit like that. You see a performance one day and it washes over you. You  see the same show again some time later perhaps with a different cast and it really speaks to you. That has happened to me with Christopher Wheeldon's adaptation of The Winter's Tale.  When I saw it for the first time just over two years ago I thought it was sort of OK but nowt to write home about as we say in Yorkshire and I regret that I damned it with faint praise (see Royal Ballet "The Winter's Tale" 14 April 2014). I wrote:

"I expected so much of The Winter's Tale. I had been looking forward to it for months. A new work by Christopher Wheeldon based on Shakespeare by a fine choreographer for our national company with a stellar cast. It should have blown me off my feet. Well I quite liked the show but blown off my feet? I wasn't."

I saw it again on Monday and loved it unreservedly.

Why the change? I think the reason I didn't get The Winter's Tale the first time round was that I had just not been in the mood for it.  As I wrote at the time:

"Now I have to say that I was not in the most receptive frame of mind when I entered the Royal Opera House. I had a horrible journey down to London and I had been working late throughout the previous night. I had skipped breakfast and had only a light lunch. Consequently I was tired and hungry. Had I not paid a lot of money for my ticket I would have gone straight to bed. Moreover, the reason that I had to work through the night was that I had spent a couple of hours in Huddersfield town hall listening to the Choral's performing one of the most memorable concerts I have ever attended or am ever likely to attend. It may be that anything after that concert was going to be an anticlimax."

In fact, I began to appreciate the ballet when I saw it on screen a few days later (see The Winter's Tale - Time to eat my Hat 29 April 2014).  I enjoyed it all the more when I saw it again on on telly on Christmas day.

On Monday I was in the mood for Wheeldon's ballet even though I had been up since 04:00 our time in order to catch my flight home from Budapest after a memorable experience the night before and a hard day's work in London. It is a very satisfying work, architectural in its symmetry with recurring features such as the colour coding of the courts of Bohemia and Sicilia, the bands on stage in all three acts, the moving statues, the trees and galleons .... I could go on. There is much drama in his choreography such as Leontes's contortions to denote his jealousy in act 1 and the symbolic reconciliation of the laying on of hands in act III first by Perdita and Florizel and later by her father. That moment and also the reunion of Perdita with her parents a few moments later had me close to tears. There are moments of great joy such as the folk dancing in act II that I have always liked:

"Act II is very different. Set around a gnarled moss covered tree there is a festival with exuberant dancing accompanied by the most infectiously vibrant music. Perdita danced by Sarah Lamb and Florizel by Stephen McRae fall in love. They are spied on and discovered by Polixenes, king of Bohemia, who threatens to kill them but they set sail to Sicily with the king of Bohemia in hot pursuit. Little details like the fact that Bohenia is landlocked don't seem to have bothered Shakespeare or even Wheeldon. However there is such a thing as poetic licence and this is a case where it applies. Nevertheless, this is is the best bit of the ballet and that is possibly because it is the part that owes least to Shakespeare."

This time I loved it. Similarly, I have always  enjoyed Joby Talbot's score: "Valiant Talbot" as he is described by Nigel Bates in the programme notes. And the special effects - especially the ships and even the bear with its ghostly muzzle - were outstanding.

Did I like this cast more than the last one?  I don't think that could have been possible as I admire Cuthbertson, Lamb, McRae and Watson enormously. But Marianela Nuñez was a magnificent Hermione, Beatriz Stix-Brunell a delightful Perdita, Vadim Muntagirov a charming Florizel and Bennet Gartside reflected the torrent of emotions in Leontes's head brilliantly. Monday was the first time I had noticed Itziar Mendizabal. She danced Paulina, loyal to Hermione and Leontes, and the agent of their reunion and reconciliation which is one of the most moving scenes in any ballet. As he comes from Bradford it is always a pleasure to see Thomas Whitehead. He danced the old shepherd on Monday.

I would love to see this ballet again and I think I owe it to the dancers to see the same cast as I saw in 2014. There will be performances of the work between now and the 10 June.

The New Season at Covent Garden

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Author Russ London

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The Royal Opera House's new dance season has been on the House's website since 15 April and it has already attracted some 71 comments, not all of them positive though I can't see why. The Royal Ballet is special and I wish I had the time and resources to see everything though if I did I would never be able to see anything else.  There are some who would ask "Why would you want to see anything else when the Royal Ballet is the gold standard, at least in Britain?" My view is that one needs a bit of variety in life. Fish and chips and chicken tikka masala as well as haute cuisine. In ballet terms, that means small regional as well as national flagship companies. So I have to be selective and here are my choices.

This Autumn I am tempted by Viscera, Afternoon of a Faun, Tchaikovsky pas de deux and Carmen particularly Viscera after hearing Laura Morera at the London Ballet Circle last week (see Laura Morera 25 Aug 2015). Of course, I am also looking forward to Carlos Acosta's Carmen. There have been lots of attempts to translate Bizet into ballet but they have not generally stuck with the public. Maybe  this production will be different.

One ballet that I really love is Ashton's Monotones and that is to be performed with Two Pigeons in November and early December. The Nutcracker returns at Christmas and the Royal Ballet's production is particularly good. There are so many Nutcrackers at that time of the year that it is easy to get Nutcracker fatigue. However this one is magical not least because the House with its Christmas decorations offers such n enchanting setting. It is the show to which I shall take my grandson manqué for his first experience of Covent Garden.

I did not do justice to The Winter's Tale first time round because I was shattered by the drive (see Royal Ballet "The Winter's Tale" 14 April 2014) and I only got to appreciate it in the cinema (see The Winter's Tale - Time to eat my Hat 29 April 2014) and on telly last Christmas. I think I shall appreciate it far more when I see it on stage again.

The last show on my "must go" list is the new Wayne McGregor, The Invitation  and Within the Golden Hour in Spring.  Another Wheeldon and one, of course, MacMillan.

Most of the productions are contributed by the Royal Ballet but there will be visits to the Linbury by our own Phoenix Dance Theatre which I would not miss for the world, the Royal New Zealand Ballet and a number of other interesting companies. This year the Linbury will close for a while which will mean that Ballet Black will have to find somewhere else to launch their new season which is a shame because they always shine in that auditorium. The Dutch National Ballet Junior Company will also have to find another venue if they come to this country this year. I am trying to persuade them to perform at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre and if they came to Leeds Gita and I would spoil them to bits. But I guess there are many other factors that they have to consider.

The Winter's Tale - Time to eat my Hat

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I am just about to place a couple of hats in the microwave. One is The Winter's Tale which I damned with the faintest of praise in Royal Ballet "The Winter's Tale" 14 April 2014. The other are the Royal Opera House's HDTV transmissions which I described as "good quality hamburger" in Giselle and I was even less polite about Don Quixote. Tonight I floated out of the Huddersfield Odeon after watching the HDTV transmission of The Winter's Tale with a smile from ear to ear.  Act I, which had dragged last time, simply flew for me.  The tension was palpable.  Act II, which had saved the ballet for me the first time I saw it revealed fresh delights. Act III with the triple reconciliation was sublime.

Now this is how I should have felt on 12 April 2014 when I saw the same show in Covent Garden. This is the reason why I think I got it this time but not then.  Act I, the longest of the three Acts, is crucial to the appreciation of this ballet and the key to appreciating that Act are the contortions of Leontes's body and the expressions on his face. These were prominent on screen but I missed them entirely when I was in the House.  It may be that the interviews before the show - particularly the one with Watson - were helpful for they alerted the audience as to what to look out for.  Wheeldon had remarked how Watson could turn his body into the most remarkable shapes to express his anguish and so he did. Those contortions and facial expressions exerted enormous tension.  In the second interval Wheeldon had described his cast as "actors who dance" rather than the converse. Leontes's build up of jealousy and loathing until his explosion of rage exemplifies those qualities magnificently.

Having cracked Leontes's emotions I found myself appreciating the other features of Act I. The complex textures of Joby Talbot's score, Bob Crowley's designs and Natasha Katz's lighting.  I even got to see the bear.  Its muzzle, which was so clear on screen, was just a length of cloth when I saw it live.  I was already looking forward to Act II but I found new detail in the dancing, new rhythms in the score and best of all the expression on Lamb's face when McRae asked her to marry him. I had also liked Act III on 12 April but this time I took in Cuthbertson's final pas de deux with Watson properly. As an expression of love it was simply beautiful.

I noticed from the tweets that I was not the only one who enjoyed the transmission more than the live show. This was a particularly good broadcast, much better than Giselle or Don Quixote.  I think this is a ballet that does work well for cinema but I also think it is a work that needs to be seen more than once to be appreciated properly.

I love the Royal Ballet very much having followed it for nearly 60 years. I love the House more than any other theatre in the world.  I love all the dancers who have ever trod its boards. It is so good to be able to write this review.