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Shakespeare Triple Bill
Birmingham Royal Ballet
Birmingham Hippodrome
**** A TRIPLE bill with three very different
parts; their only connection, marking the 400th anniversary of his
death, William Shakespeare. It opens with
Wink,
pictured above (picture: Andrew Ross) a new ballet from Jessica
Lang with music by New York Based Polish composer Jakub Ciupinski, a
former Birmingham Conservatoire student incidentally. The ballet is based on Shakespeare’s Sonnets –
not all 154, just five of Lang’s favourites, with snatches read by Alfie
Jones of Playbox Theatre, Warwick. Shakespeare had the ability to use language as an
instrument with words as his music. You might not understand everything
that was written or being said but like music, the sound, the ebb and
flow of the words, meant you understood and felt the emotions his words
conveyed. The short readings here though were slow, flat,
monotone and emotionless, presumably to fit in with the accompanying
movement, which meant any feeling had to come from the music and the 10
dancers, five men and five women in what was a more contemporary dance
piece, with different shades of emotion applied to the five sonnets. The Moor’s Pavane was a more classical piece with
music by Henry Purcell arranged by Simon Sadoff. The music,
incidentally, includes snatches of one of Purcell’s best known pieces,
the Rondeau from the incidental music he wrote for the 1695 revival of
Aphra Behn’s play Abdelazer - The Moor's Revenge. José Limón’s one act
tragedy from 194
Limón uses a pavane and
other dances popular in the high renaissance of late 15th
and early 16th
Italy which gives an interesting dramatic contradiction with
600-year-old fashions and dances set in a contemporary style. Gorgeously
sumptuous costumes in Pauline Lawrence’s design by the way, immediately
setting date and time. Mackay, as Iago, has the ear of the Moor,
Singleton’s Othello, blackening the name of Othello’s wife and we all
know it is not going to end well for Delia Mathews’ Desdemona. Elisha
Willis’s Emilia is the only one who gets out of it relatively unscathed
although as Desdemona’s maidservant, her mistresses death is a bit of a
career killer so she will probably be down the Venice Job Centre
tomorrow. Both pieces were
conducted by Philip Ellis with the string section of the Royal Ballet
Sinfonia to the fore in Wink
– the cello playing in particular was just magnificent. The final piece was
more fun, David Bintley’s Shakespeare
Suite dating back to 1999 with music by
Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn
played by the celebrated Colin Towns Mask Orchestra, jazz royalty,
conducted by BRB’s Paul Murphy. This is a contemporary dance take on some of
Shakespeare’s best known couples - apart from Mathias Dingman who
contents himself the two sides of Hamlet. We have Petruchio
(Lachlan Monaghan) and Kate (Angela Paul) from
The Taming of the Shrew,
Richard III (Valentin Olovyannikow) and Lady Anne (Arancha Baselga),
Iain Mackay with spiky red hair as Macbeth with his lady of the blood
splattered hands, danced by Céline Gittens Bottom (Kit Holder) and
Titania ( Laura Purkiss) make an appearance from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
while Elisha Willis is promoted from maidservant to Desdemona to
Tyrone Singleton’s Othello, and Jamie Bond and Jenna Roberts gave us
Shakespeare’s and perhaps the world’s best known lovers, Romeo and
Juliet. An upbeat finale to a varied and enjoyable
evening of dance. To 25-06-16. Roger Clarke 22-06-26
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