Ballet
Beauty mistreatment
Robin Young
Perhaps that will teach them to let Sleeping Beauties lie. Our professional ballet critics having jibbed and jibed at the last Royal Ballet production of Sleeping Beauty since it was introduced in 1968 (they did, of course, have to see it more often than I did, which perhaps soured their copy flow) have been rewarded with a new effort notably inferior in every way. The largesse of the American Friends of Covent Garden and of Mrs Annenberg raised $100,000 to make this all possible, and why the administration should have chosen to expend their generous donations on retiring the Royal Ballet's most popular production (98.1 per cent average paid attendance in twelve performances down to August 1972) is not for me to explain.
The costumes by Peter Farmer come in a wide diversity of sorts — fussy for fairies, clumsy for cavaliers and princes, and absolutely ludicrous for the finale in which the courtiers are made very top heavy with wigs and orange plumes while poor Gerd Larsen has to try and walk like a queen while seeming to have a sofa under her skirt. To dignify this mish-mash by reference to the style of historical periods would give a false impression of elegance and consistency, so I shall not bother.
The acts are designed with single colours predominant — blue for the prologue being particularly ill-chosen. Carabosse as played by Ronald Emblem looks like Hermione Gingold on roller skates, but is one of the more dramatic things in the production from which dramatic effects have been almost totally expunged.
The prologue fairies are identified with blue flowers to suit the designer, and not to give their variations any particular significance. The village girls at the beginning of Act 1 knit ostentatiously (supposedly, like me, they thought it was sewing that was banned) and are mildly ticked, off by the King. Nobody seems to take it very seriously. The PrinCess is taken off stage before the court is put to sleep, and the growth of the enchanted forest goes for nothing. The two bits of gauze look just like two bits of gauze.
The tutor's dance is made more than usually pointless by a transparent blindfold and unintelligible embarrassment when he finally catches the Countess, who instigates the game and should not mind. The hunting scene is more than usually • boring. Act 3 has another series of fairies, far too much like the prologue. They have even taken the fun out of Puss in Boots and the White Cat, and have redressed the latter to make her a very sour puss. A jumpy little dance for a Hop o' my Thumb has been inserted between the Bluebirds and grand pas de deux, where it is made to seem unnecessarily slight. The less said about the finale the better.
On the credit side, perhaps, one could place the windswept curtains in the princess's bedroom, but the awakening scene is otherwise flat. There is no sense that this court has been under the spell for a hundred years. Carabosse's attendants look as if they have just come from the bottom of the duckpond, and I, rather liked them. The dancing was, of course, good, though Sibley looked strained, and uncertain and only Collier had both assurance and luck among the prologue fairies. She and Michael Coleman also excelled as the Blue Birds.
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