Beauty and the Beast is a hard act to follow and Birmingham Royal Ballet has sensibly programmed a crowd-pleasing triple bill in the wake of their revival of David Bintley’s fabulous fairytale ballet.
Ninette de Valois’ 1937 chess-inspired fantasia, Checkmate, is chock-full of characters and steps. There is more than a hint of Alice in Wonderland in its battle between the red pieces and the black pieces, albeit with the addition of Greek tragedy to darken the mood. Spritely red pawns kick off the action before the Black Queen enters like Clytemnestra on a bad day. As one of the nastiest villainesses in ballet, Victoria Marr is icily seductive more than sexy and while this is not my favourite ballet of all time it is an impressive account of it.
The lyrical purity of Ashton’s Symphonic Variations is a welcome counterpoint to de Valois’ lurid melodrama. Three couples deliver a poised and elegant roundelay of encounters in which every nuanced movement is umbilically connected to Franck’s music. A model of classical gentility, it employs stillness as effectively as movement.
Finally, John Cranko’s cartoonish ballet Pineapple Poll, designed by Osbert Lancaster, is a whirligig of colour and action set to Arthur Sullivan’s romping music. Part Carry On pantomime, part slapstick silent comedy, its tale of saucy sailors and their putative girlfriends is dominated by Carol-Anne Millar’s lively Poll and Robert Parker’s handsome Captain Belaye, around whom all the girls collapse in a heap of petticoats. He effortlessly combines a jig and a hornpipe with classical steps while Cranko tosses bearded, cross-dressing girls, questionable sexual politics and a ludicrous denouement into a vivacious, bouncing and completely insane entertainment.
Birmingham Hippodrome, October 6-8
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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