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Thursday 19 May 2016

Royal Ballet (HD broadcast), 18/05/2016

Lowell Liebermann : Frankenstein

Artists of The Royal Ballet
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Koen Kessels

 For a short novel, Frankenstein packs a wallop when it comes to content; the thing is, the bulk of that content is philosophical rather than dramatic.  It covers a staggering range of very profound topics in a very compact narrative, and the basic plot-line certainly sank its hooks into the collective imagination very quickly after its publication.  Numerous have been the adaptations, but few of them are faithful to the novel because the adaptors have always felt the necessity to pad things out to a greater or lesser extent, if not actually altering things radically.  James Whale's celebrated 1931 film really only uses the bare bones of the plot, although to considerable effect.

Any choreographer's first full-evening narrative ballet is a daunting project, and I imagine particularly so when you're as young as Liam Scarlett.  He has acknowledged that he's spent the last three years working on this commission, and he's just 30 now.  However, somebody should have got him to consider his choice a little more carefully.  Although he has been about as faithful to Mary Shelley as any version I've ever seen, in any form, because his commission was for a 3-act, evening-length ballet for a full company (it's a co-commission between the Royal Ballet and San Francisco Ballet), there's a lot of padding here too.  The piece would have been a lot better as a 2-act ballet for smaller forces, and a startling amount of redundant dancing could have been excised.

In order to provide work for the corps de ballet, there's a completely useless tavern scene in the first act, which has absolutely no relevance to anything, there's a pastiche dance at the birthday party in Act 2, the blind-man's bluff game, although essential, goes on too long, and so does the waltz at the start of Act 3.  There's a lot of useless personnel scurrying around in the opening scene, and the five female attendants during the anatomy lesson are, well, a bit weird.  However, that whole scene is a bit weird, in quite a good way, so they get a pass.

The choreography is also a little unstable, so to speak.  The other reason all that corps work mentioned above is redundant is that it's not hugely interesting to watch.  There are three pas-de-deux, one in each act, for Victor and Elizabeth, which look very much like something Kenneth Macmillan could have done, especially the first one, while parts of the Creature's choreography reminded me of Macmillan again, this time in the Salamander's choreography in The Prince of the Pagodas.  The start of the last act, the wedding party, reminded me quite strongly of several different versions of Act 2 of Cinderella (the Prokofiev ballet).

Where I started seeing what I thought really is Scarlett's original choreographic 'voice' was right at the end, in the two final duets, between the Creature and Elizabeth (though that too was a little long) and the Creature and Victor.  These were both striking, distinctive in a way little else had been up to that point, save the anatomy lesson.  That, on the other hand, was a frankly eccentric, but very entertaining set-piece, again, barely advancing the story, but very watchable.  The other moment that has stuck in my mind was the last sequence of the blind-man's bluff game, when the Creature is dancing with a blindfolded William, a remarkably strong role for a young boy dancer - I'm guessing Guillem Cabrera Espinach, tonight's William, is about twelve or so.

On the whole, therefore, this is an uneven creation, too long and stretched very thin in places, yet not without its points of interest.  It was, however, gifted with a superb design, sets and costumes, from John Macfarlane, at his most inspired.

Federico Bonelli as Victor Frankenstein
© Bill Cooper/ROH (2016)
If the 'creation' scene (see above) was borrowed straight from Whale's Frankenstein, the rest of the setting was both very much in period, and in a slightly fantastical world, with great, swirling, Turner-esque backdrops, particularly in the last act.  Macfarlane's painterly eye was operating in full force, with a subtle, fairly subdued colour palette enlivened with telling splashes of colour, such as William's red velvet suit, and against which the Creature's pasty-hued and luridly scarred body suit stood out markedly.

Lowell Liebermann's score, specially commissioned, is a big, lyrical, full-orchestra extravaganza, lushly scored, pleasing to the ear, reasonably varied, though the identifying themes are not, perhaps, strong enough.  They certainly don't linger especially - even only a couple of hours out of the screening, I recall the overall sound, and the mood of certain passages, but not an actual melody.  There are a couple of places where he has gone for an approximate pastiche of late 18th Century style, but it's more a suggestion than any real attempt at imitation.  Otherwise, it's quite a filmic score, and Bernard Hermann came to mind more than once.

As a ballet, it's a piece that requires a good deal of acting, as well as dancing, from its cast, and most were very good.  Meaghan Grace Hinkis was particularly affecting as the unfortunate Justine, another rejected child in this version, pathetically grateful for the affection she is offered by the younger members of the Frankenstein family.  Laura Morera had no trouble with Elizabeth's sweetness, her pliant back, fluid arms and soft hands all readily expressive of that compassion, though I would have liked to see something a little harder-edged come into her final dance with the Creature, more evocative of panic.  Steven McRae brought his characteristic energy to the Creature, and a nice sense of alienation, and of the constant pain, both emotional and physical, of his very being.  Federico Bonelli lacked a certain quality of arrogance - and really, in the novel, Victor Frankenstein's ego is a major factor - nor did I get a clear sense of repulsion from him.  He seemed more disgusted at himself, his actions, than directly at the Creature, which is not wrong, but it should be both.  However, his elegance and his bounding leaps, particularly in the whirling mania of the 'creation' sequence, were impressive.

With two companies having invested this much in the 3-act version, it's doubtful whether Scarlett will pull the piece to revise and reduce it, which is a pity, because it could certainly be improved.  As it stands, there's a lot of dead wood for only a few really interesting passages.

[Next : 7th June]

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