Humperdinck : Hansel and Gretel
Scottish Ballet
Scottish Ballet Orchestra
Richard Honner
I tend to enjoy seeing new works, especially full-length, and using music towards which I'm already favourably predisposed. Furthermore, after the rather impressive A Streetcar Named Desire last spring, I had high hopes of any new piece produced on this company. Alas, this new Hansel and Gretel is little more than a reasonably pleasant means of passing an evening, but not really a ballet to remember.
It wasn't a bad idea. A fairy-tale ballet for the Christmas season, often a popular and successful notion, this time with a tale well-known to all, but not at all common in the context of dance. The score is derived predominantly from Humperdinck's famous opera, which does indeed feature extensive passages of purely orchestral music of a very high quality. The rest is adapted without the voices, or else borrowed from other Humperdinck works, and most of the time it's reasonably successful. The one interpolation that really set my teeth on edge was the number used for Hansel's solo with the loaf of bread, in Act 1, and a key change might solve that particular clash.
In Christopher Hampson's take on the familiar tale, the set-up is a little different; the Witch becomes a kind of Pied Piper figure, luring the children out from their very homes, and not just waiting for them to stray into the woods, while Hansel and Gretel's parents are more over-stressed with desperately trying to make ends meet, than actually uncaring. It makes sense in the context of an evening's ballet to enlarge the Witch's role considerably - in the opera, "she" (it's usually a drag role) only appears in the last act, though she's a musical presence throughout. In effect, however, her presence throughout the forest scene (Act 2 in the opera, the latter part of Act 1 in this ballet), is equivocal, and never really explained, and at no point does she ever become a truly menacing figure, coming across more as an abusive parent type than an actual supernatural force. Part of this may be due to Laura Ravizzi's interpretation, neatly enough presented but without any real sense of danger emanating from her, but Hampson's choreography doesn't help.
In general, in fact, Hampson's choreography throughout is curiously inexpressive. By far the best is given to the Raven boys, initially a kind of Jets-style street gang, transforming into the Witch's bird-familiars later on. With them, for the first time, some interest sparked, and their number as they lead the children further astray into the woods was both well presented, and well danced by tonight's trio of Daniel Davidson, Rimbaud Patron and Thomas Edwards. They, and Victor Zarallo's quietly creepy Sandman, interjected the first true intimations of menace into the proceedings. But the children pull each other around bickeringly in a manner that quickly becomes repetitive, and the few group numbers looked awkward, particularly in Act 2 where the scenery took up at least half the available floor space, with the result that some of the numbers (the Dew Drop Fairy's Attendants, in particular) actually looked cramped, and were certainly rather scrappily danced.
Eve Mutso and Eric Cavallari put on a good show as the parents, and made the most of quite a nice pas de deux at the start of the Dream Sequence, when they appear as sophisticated socialites, but with gestures of tenderness that are a reflection of what we have already seen from them, and therefore an indication that the children are not in any doubt about their relationship. Of the children, Gretel (Bethany Kingsley-Garner) has the slightly bigger part, not too surprising as she's the elder, and the clear leader, but I thought that Andrew Peasgood fitted his role a little better, though even his creditable attempts at looking suitably juvenile were not sufficient to excuse what seemed like Hansel's unhealthy attachment to his teddy bear!
It's a handsomely designed production, on the whole, but the choreography never really convinces, and there was a visible lack of cohesion in the dancing on too many fronts to make for a really satisfying creation. As I said, not an unpleasant way to spend the evening, but not a particularly memorable one either. I daresay it can stand a few more outings, but in the end, this Hansel and Gretel needs extensive revision, or it will be quickly forgotten.
[Next : 20th December]
No comments:
Post a Comment