Tins week the company has added to its programme two
ballets which have not been seen in London for a long time, these are The Wanderer and The Quest. In both the choreography is by Frederick Ashton, and the former met with a wildly enthusiastic reception which is all the more surprising as it is a difficult and com- plicated ballet with ingenious and striking choreography and owing not a little to Massine's handling of purely symphonic music. In this case the music is Schubert's Fantasia in C, Op. 15, orchestrated by Liszt, and the fine music, the superb performances by Robert Helpntann and Margot Fonteyn and the vivid costumes and scenery by Graham Sutherland were largely responsible for the enthusiasm of the audience. This is a most happy revival, and should have a continued success. The Quest is an even more ambitious ballet with its theme taken from Spensees Fame Queene, music by William Walton and scenery and costumes by John Piper, but it lacks the unified effect of The Wanderer, and although Mr. Piper's costumes are fresh and striking, and some of his scenes effective, yet they are rather fussy and lack the pure lucid decorative quality of Mr. Sutherland's use of colour in The Wanderer. Nor is there any real dramatic tension in the action, and there is too much repetition in the three combats of the knights, careful as Mr. Ashton has been to diversify their movements. The whole ballet is elaborately artificial and the music is cleverly constructed in the same style, yet the essential theme is a very simple one, and it is not helped or in any way expressed by all this artifice. That is the real reason, I suspect, why, in spite of a considerable display of all-round talent, it fails to make a corresponding effect.
JAMES REDFERN.
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