Requiem for a wig: Ashton mixed programme at the ROH
Ashton's The Dream, Symphonic Variations and Marguerite and Armand
The Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House
Amphitheatre B37, £12
3 June 2017 (matinee)
ROH page
This mixed programme is a sound statement of the importance of Ashton and the importance of the Royal Ballet dancing Ashton. It's not, though, a particularly imaginative one, and I'm moderately aggrieved that I've seen all these ballets at least once and sometimes more often within the last five years. Surely there are some other Ashton one-act ballets worth seeing. But that's (almost) the only gripe.
The Dream was summarized by one of my colleagues seeing it for the first time as the perfect narrative ballet, and it pretty much is that. The score is, as everyone knows, glorious (played with wonderful precision here by the orchestra under Emmanuel Plasson). The story, as expressed by the music, has humour and romance, wit and poignancy. It makes ideal fodder for a choreographer of Ashton's musicality and narrative precision.
I'd booked to see Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé, because I'm imaginative like that, but it was the other characters that charmed me. I've already been impressed by David Yudes's Alain in La Fille mal gardée (again with Hayward/Sambé) but his gravity-defying, long-limbed Puck is maybe even better. The four lovers, played by Claire Calvert, Itziar Mendizabal, Matthew Ball and Tomas Mock, have exquisite comic timing and all look their parts wonderfully (especially, what can I say, Ball as the dashing Lysander).
As you know, I am a card-carrying Sambé fan, but to my surprise Oberon's adagio sections are not quite within his grasp, resulting in some upsettingly wobbly penchés. That said, his chemistry with Hayward almost makes up for such sins, and their reconciliation pas de deux, wobbles aside, was nicely done. And by the way, that pas de deux always strikes me as not of reconciliation but of female subjugation, Ashton explicitly tapping into the play's ambiguity with sharp movements that suggest more a bird being trapped than a haughty spirit quelled. Here begins the campaign to rename it the subjugation pas de deux.
I have adored Symphonic Variations on previous revivals, but here I found it pretty and not much more. Maybe it's sublimity is fragile, pervious to such things as Reece Clarke's minor costume malfunction (which he dealt with very neatly). Still, very pretty is not a bad way to spend half an hour, and the simplicity and clarity of the ballet make it a good vehicle for admiring dancers. I was chiefly admiring Lauren Cuthbertson – what perfect arms, what expansive grace – but it's good to see Clarke more comfortable with the piece's considerable challenges than he was in 2014, and also to see Joseph Sissens bring his remarkable sickle-shaped feet into the spotlight.
Marguerite and Armand is a very silly ballet, there's no doubt about it, and with its to my mind ill-advised orchestration of the Liszt Piano Sonata it's at times an unloveable one. But Alessandra Ferri and Federico Bonelli, well paired in temperature and physique, make much of it more loveable than it might be, and I even succumbed to a self-indulgent tear at Ferri's inevitable death. I also shed a (more figurative) tear for the abandoned silly wigs of Marguerite's admirers: nostalgic now for their whiffed ridiculousness, I deplore my former scorn-pouring.
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