thu 28/03/2024

Les Patineurs & Tales of Beatrix Potter, Royal Ballet | reviews, news & interviews

Les Patineurs & Tales of Beatrix Potter, Royal Ballet

Les Patineurs & Tales of Beatrix Potter, Royal Ballet

Ancient skaters are more alive than the stuffed hedgehogs in Ashton double-bill

The well-prepared adult accompanying an under-10 to the Royal Ballet’s Tales of Beatrix Potter will take with them a pillow and a potty, the pillow for themselves, the potty to tuck under the seat for the necessary moment during this 70-minute marathon. Should the Stasi at Bag Search at the Opera House entrance insist on the potty being checked into the cloakroom, the canny adult carries a supersized handkerchief as backup, to stuff into the child’s wailing mouth when - 30 minutes in, with infant acuity - it realises that it has seen the best bits and there are another 40 minutes of these capering costumes to go, while all the adult wants is a bit of shut-eye until the thing is all over and they can get on with Christmas.

It was Anthony Dowell - a non-parent - who is to blame, not Frederick Ashton, whose name is tattooed on this Frankenstein creature. Years after Ashton died Dowell insisted on taking a perfectly sweet film where cleverly costumed and lifelike Tiggywinkles and Puddle-ducks trit-trotted through idyllic English scenery to just about enough Ashton choreographic undercarriage, and turning it into a leaden stage spectacle to strip London parents’ pockets bare in the season of goodwill.

Still, that doesn’t prevent hundreds of grown-ups waking up with a start and applauding wildly when Tales of Beatrix Potter’s curtain comes down. Was it wonderful? they ask their child, forgetting that said tot can’t speak for the hankie. The grown-ups’ applause only encourages the Opera House to put this benighted thing on again.

Fact is, well within half an hour you have had everything: your opening frisson of pleasure at seeing gigantic stairs and perfectly costumed little Mr Johnny Town-mouse and Mrs Tittle-mouse playing skipping ropes with their tails, your oohs and aahs at Mrs Tiggywinkle and the tiny child mice (probably your elder child among them) fluttering their microscopic rodent hands, the waddling Jemima Puddle-duck and the fine bounding male solo for Jeremy Fisher, who get the best scenery with foxgloves and lily-pads. But now you have the marathon that is the piglings and yet more mouselets, the squirrels and the endless, endless episode of Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca trashing the dollshouse. Which proves that I was awake for some of it.

Well, yes, there are all the ballet in-jokes, the tittupy little steps quoting other Ashton favourites, the stream of jolly déjà-vus from John Lanchbery’s other ballet arrangements (Don Quixote, La Bayadère prominent "pinches", as Lanchbery cheerfully used to call them). His music for Squirrel Nutkin is very much more fun than Ashton/Dowell’s inactive choreography for it, and I am not going to steer you away from the original 1971 film version for a moment. I couldn’t help noticing in the programme, though, that only three of the tales in Dowell's misproduction are credited as having philanthropic support - in future, perhaps, they might put on only those elements that attract philanthropy.

However, that would leave the skating rink of Ashton’s Les Patineurs (The Skaters) empty except for one spinning boy in Blue, which would be a disaster. One day someone will stage a ballet for all those characters who lack a personal sponsor. But every single skater, even the most hopeless, in this joyful creation deserves their place on that stage, as Louis Walsh of X-Factor would say. Les Patineurs is one of the unmitigated delights of all artistic creation in theatre, intended to show off the growing virtuosity of the very young British ballet in 1937, but more memorable for being evidence of the wittiest of creators in an era of unmatched charm.

William Chappell’s vintage Quality Street designs alone make it treasurable: boys in an eyewatering get-up of tufty tan velvet jackets and ice-blue skin-tight breeches, girls with furry anklets above their coloured pointe-shoes and big picture-bonnets. Then Ashton’s clever choreography, rather than capturing the aerial quality of ballet, challenges the performers to glide and skid, stalk cautiously across the treacherous surface, or perform dizzying spins and sudden acrobatic lifts.

There wasn’t too much gliding in the dancers’ footwork last night - several of them seemed to think a campy mince answered the case, including, for a ghastly moment, Steven McRae as the Blue Boy, who recovered himself quickly and exhibited himself and his fouettés with the elan now expected of him. Greater allure, though, came from the super-demure pair of Blue Girls, Yuhui Choe and Laura Morera, picking their way determinedly over imaginary ice on pointe, suddenly turning their heads to smile like dolls at us. Their amused grace and later their super-bravura spins made them the top girls. Sarah Lamb, in the all-white leading lady role that Fonteyn originally did, was all winsomeness in her duet with Rupert Pennefather, who whipped her over his head into upside-down splits several times with nonchalant ease, but elsewhere they were not quite the Torvill and Dean we need. Still, the sheer glow of Les Patineurs endures - aged 72, it is as blithely alive and spirited as the Beatrix Potter is dead and stuffed.

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