Sleeping Beauty

If the Federal election seems like an ugly reality tomorrow, lose yourself in the exquisite fantasy of Sleeping Beauty and feel your imagination and love of true art revitalised on Sunday. Matthew Bourne takes enormous risks with his ballets/theatrical experiences. Purists may object to the contemporary choreography; the fuller body shapes; the lack of stiff tutus and point shoes; the liberties taken with story. Purists need to take their blinkers off. The survival of ballet relies on great showmen like Bourne giving us something new and fresh, full of wit and beauty but also confronting, making the story Gothic, set in the late 19^th century and with “good” vampire fairies explaining the immortality of the sleeping princess’s one true love. Bourne is not a great choreographer, and there is nothing in the dancing to make you gasp with admiration. Often the music seems to overpower the dance itself. Nor are there any virtuoso solos or pas de deux. For this, like Bourne’s other offerings, is as much about theatre as dance.

Everyone knows the story, or thinks they do; the angry dark fairy who has not been paid for delivering a baby to the barren king and queen, exacts payment from their daughter on her 21^st birthday, sending her into a deep sleep for 100 years, from which she can only be awoken by a true love’s kiss. Bourne makes it Caradoc, the son of the fairy Carabosse (both played by the charismatic Adam Maskell) who exacts revenge and plans Aurora’s sacrifice on their wedding day.

With a few minutes of the opening scene, exquisitely staged and beautifully shot, we are transported into a world of magic. Not, as you might think, by the arrival of the fairies, but by baby Princess Aurora herself… a stunning puppet operated by an unseen puppeteer. Somehow this baby, who crawls up curtains, and ducks in and out of her Nanny’s legs, has incredible personality and realism, and when she claps her hands at the fairies’ antics, we believe totally she is a real toddler. It’s a masterstroke by Bourne, though in some ways the puppet does overshadow the live dancers.

Hannah Vasallo plays the grown princess. She is beautifully ethereal, incredibly supple and seemingly weightless. She commands the stage whenever she is present, and (despite being known to many as Baby in Dirty Dancing in the West End) her strong classical training shows. There’s great support from Dominic North, convincing as the love-struck gamekeeper, and Christopher Marney as Count Lilac.

But it’s the production itself that is the star. With exquisite set and costume design by Lex Brotherston ( including moving walkways which give the illusion of the fairies flying) and breath-taking lighting and sound by Paule Constable and Pul Gruithous, Bourne has created something special, if not for connoiseurs of dance, then certainly for lovers of marvellous theatre.

Coral Drouyn

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