BALLET
Darrell's beauty
CLEMENT CRISP
The move north of the border has done nothing to lessen Western Theatre Ballet's sense of adventure since it became Scottish Theatre Ballet. We are entering, so I am reliably informed, on a new romantic age
and, ever sensitive to the feelings of the time, gra have just premiered their big new romantic ballet at Sadler's Wells. Beauty and the Beast is a brave achievement. In returning to Mme de Villeneuve's lovely myth, Peter Darrell and his scenarist and producer, Colin Graham, have made a drama that is remarkably touching and apposite.
Their Beast, Azor, is truly beastly; he is not the customary handsome prince afflicted with a nasty case of facial hair that will somehow be magically depilated when Beauty proves her love for him. This Beast is bestial by nature—like the werewolf, he is torn between the two sides of his char- acter at war within him, and his tragedy is that he realises this. Azor's despair and shame when Beauty sees him, blood-spat- tered, tearing voraciously at a rabbit, is quite as urgent and' dramatic today as were the assorted sexual convolutions of Sun into Darkness.
The myth then is given dignity and force, but where Darrell and his collaborators (Thea Musgrave for score, Peter Minshall for decor, as well as Colin Graham) have been most original is in making the magic world of Azor real and the real world of Rosaline and her family almost a caricature. Everything insists upon the mystery and nocturnal enchantment of the Beast's domain. Peter Minshall's sets seem cast in mercury; they are silvery, luminous, now gleaming, now dark as clouds pass over the moon. The stage picture shimmers and flickers; huge shadow-winged creatures trans- port Rosaline to Azor's castle, great moths flutter in the night air, silver statues come to life, the moon unavailingly seeks union with its reflection in a pool flecked with quicksilver. It is as mysterious, as gleaming and fitfully shadowed as the allusions and overtones in the story itself.
Darrell plots his drama with remarkable assurance, and invites our understanding of its implications with hints rather than avert statements, notably in a dream sequence when the Beast's double nature separates as Rosaline seeks to dance with the man al- though the beast constantly interposes him- self. Thea Musgrave's music sustains the drama, and the sensitive performances of Donna Day Washington and Tatsuo Sakai in the title roles: grn deserve every con- gratulation on having acquired this beauti- fully wrought score, which constantly ravished the ear by its clear sonorities and advances the drama by establishing a clear dramatic atmosphere.
Yet despite all these fine things, the ballet is not an entire success; structurally an immense advance on Sun into Darkness, it still has longueurs in the treatment of the 'real' world of Rosaline's family, notably in the excessively protracted second scene. Elsewhere, Darrell has found a consistent and cleanly shaped classical manner that may at first sight look sparse but gradually reveals that it is excellently geared to the magic surroundings of set and costuming. Only in the final wedding celebration— golden as the warm sun takes over from the moon—does a more expansive manner seem called for: the last pas de deux (re- ceived in chilling silence on the first night) could with advantage be made more ex- ultantly happy.
The big puzzle about the work, though, is its critical reception. I find it incredible that a year's work can be summarily dis- missed after at most a couple of viewings, particularly since over a period of twelve years Darrell has guided his company as one of the liveliest and most adventurous troupes of today. Beauty marks an im- portant stage in the development both of
Darrell as a choreographer and of his com- pany, which is facing entirely new problems
of identity in Scotland. If Beauty and the Beast's critics see sporran-fetishism and be- tartaned rape in the glens as the proper
extension of wra into STB, then they have
misread both Darrell's creative career and the difficulties of regional ballet. Beauty and the Beast is a significant work, one to see and, I believe, enjoy, time and again (Scot- tish audiences please note),
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