Frederick Ashton has not done anything important for the Royal
Ballet for years. All the more reason, everyone has found, to go ecstatically potty over A Month in the Country, a wispy confection of Marguerite and Armand lightly stirred with bits of Enigma Variations, with a soft centre derived from Turgenev's play. When the old dear finally minced out, having been fetched from the wings to answer the urgent acclamations of the crowd, looking so sweetly sheepish, and kissed every one of the cast right down to the footman—well, it Was one of those moments ballets are made for. Quite as thrilling and touching as the thing itself.
Sir Fred has nurtured this project in his bosom these four decades, yet it comes up, I am glad to say, none the less fresh or surprising for that. Quite coincidentally it happens that the play is on in London at the very moment this long-considered ballet finally arrives. And if you really want to know what Turgenev is about it is to the Albery Theatre, not the Opera House, that You must go, of course. The ballet giyes a simplified and prettified account.
What the new piece has in common with Marguerite and Armand is the reduction of a classic love drama to the token gestures, Symbolic episodes and monetary incidents Which are all that a one-act ballet can afford. What it has in common with Enigma Variations, much more satisfyingly, is some
characteristically brilliant individual dances.
Subsidiary characters are dismissed from the plot. Others become mere ciphers. Someone seeing the ballet without knowing the play and without referring to the programme might suppose that Alexander Grant's bumbling Yslaev was Natalia's father rather than her husband, in which case Derek Rencher, doing one of his straight-legged, straight-backed, fusty sports-jacketed gentlemen, could be the husband instead of the silent, loyal admirer. No matter, the central, if rather conventional, trio of woman and ward both Passionately infatuated with the handsome Young tutor is clear enough, and moods and Characters are conveyed even though the story is reduced to something like melodrama.
When the tutor comes there is summer thunder and the lights darken. Only Anthony Dowell's stunning presence saves it from looking as corny as it reads. But this IS a Beliaev that women stranded in the smug, complacent contentment of well
heeled country life would go for—an irresistible charmer. He is tender and considerate with the tiny ward Vera, touchingly portrayed by Denise Nunn, a young dancer translated from the corps de ballet for the occasion; impassioned with Natalia; and only roguishly carefree in a sweeping duet with the peculiarly pretty servant girl, danced by Marguerite Porter.
Lynn Seymour is Ashton's Natalia. It could almost be that he was waiting all that time for her. She starts with a deliciously comic solo for the family, but soon there are the emotional tensions of infatuation and rivalry in love to be coped with, and these possibly only she, the most spontaneous of our dance-actresses, could manage so convincingly.
Despite the almost perfunctory treatment of some of the elements in the story, the moment of uncontrollable anger when Natalia discovers Vera with Beliaev, and slaps her ward's face makes the audience sit up with a discernible start. By now the audience are themselves sufficiently infatuated to forgive an apocalyptically romantic and improbable epilogue when Beliaev slips back unheard (slips, on the opening night unfortunately, was the operative word) to kiss the ribbons of Natalia's dress and leave at her feet that compulsory single rose that sentimentalists always sigh for. Curtain. Applause.
The music is all Chopin, adroitly chosen among unfamiliar pieces and skilfully enlarged by John Lanchbery, making a welcome return from Australia to conduct. The set, by Julia Trevelyan Oman, is characteristically fastidious in its attention to historical accuracy and to detail—a dovegrey drawing-room with a view of silver birches, redolent of comfort, ease and ennui.
There is just one charming indulgence— one of the medallion portraits high on the wall shows a relief profile of `Fredericus Ashtonus' in a laurel wreath. It gave the spotlights something appropriate to play on while all concerned were stumbling to and fro over baskets of flowers and piles of bouquets at curtain-call time. One simply cannot carp or complain about there not being enough of it (though one might wish to); what there is is very, very nice. If you like ballet and don't care too much about Turgenev, you will love this, and if you love Turgenev you will still recognise it as a real achievement.
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