Ballet
The Princess and the Showmen
By CLIVE BARNES It would not have been surprising if the new three-act American ballet, The Princess, at the Strand Theatre, had followed this unspectacular pattern. But its obviously rich sponsors have decided (bravely, I thhik) to keep it going by the awe-inspiringly simple expedient of giving away all the tickets for eight performances. The furtive papering of a house with complimen- taries is a common practice, but this wholesale (and widely publicised) give-away offer makes a West End precedent. The theory is that critical taste does not conform with mass opinion (this is probably true) and that the word-of-mouth recommendations provided by the free guinea- pigs will start people buying tickets from then on. It's an idea which might work, although personally I think it shows a confusion between 'mass opinion' and the mass opinion of theatre- goers, with the latter being much more clearly reflected by the critics than theatre managements find it convenient to recognise. If The Princess is to win through I think it will have to attract audiences who do not normally go to the theatre (or more specifically the ballet), and here I feel the attempt will probably fail.
The sponsors of The Princess have already marketed their product with a certain shrewd- ness. They advertised their ballet as a 'ballet musical' and invited the dramatic critics to its first performance. This move backfired; the dramatic critics felt duped, scented pretension, and attacked The Princess with an ungentle- manly savagery that few of their ballet col- leagues could have mustered. For all that, the principle of trying to attract non-ballet audiences is sound, for viewed as ballet (and it can't fairly be viewed as anything else) it is dreadful.
The work is a pastiche of the nineteenth- century three-act ballet, and to call it 'an experi- ment,' as does the programme, is ludicrous. The only mild difference is that Mario Braggiotti's ineptly pretentious score includes wordless mouthings from a hidden choir, a few songs and a limping commentary that narrates the story in listen-to-mother terms. The ballet originated in Palm Beach and apparently shows American civilisation at its lowest ebb. Yet perhaps village- hall entertainment is the same the world over, and the real pity is that this saga of 'a princess who lost the gift of laughter' should be placed above its station in a West End theatre. Musi- cally and choreographically it is beneath com- ment, the production and lighting are no better than amateurish, and Roger Furse's designs show only too obviously his lack of enthusiasm for the job. There are some genuine merits in the dancing, and the cast work hard. The French ballerina, Violette Verdy, is a dancer of such shining purity that she lends a sort of distinction even to this kind of triviality, and twelve-year- old Claudia Cravey (billed as a 'baby ballerina') probably has sufficient natural talent to over- come this unfortunately premature boosting. The rest of the imported American soloists are, with- out exception, bad, but the English contingent often show style and vigour.
Why I personally would like to see The Princess put down as soon as possible is the potential danger its continuing existence offers to the art of ballet. Milton Shulman has writ- ten: 'Perhaps ballet audiences—even ballet critics, who knows?—might enjoy this naïve concoction of fluttering candy floss,' and J. W. Lambert suggested that 'The Princess . . . seemed to me, though the music is boringly machine-turned, hardly sillier than most of the inane gymnastics known as ballet.' Reading understandable, if uninformed, comments like these, I too lose the gift of laughter.
After The Princess it was a relief to return gratefully to London's Festival Ballet, who last week introduced two Hungarian guest artists to London, Gabriella Lakatos and her partner Ferenc Havas, from the Budapest State Opera. Dancing in both Swan Lake (Act 2) and the Black Swan pas de deux, they show a marked Russian influence, although they are more like Bolshoi satellites than Bolshoi stars. Lakatos is a strapping, pretty girl, with too much of a taste for florid movement. Havas, the better of the two, proves a sterling partner, with a forthright- ness of manner and masculine force that make you forget the lack of polish on his technical small-talk.
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