Humour in ballet has always been problematic for me. In the past, I have seen pantomime horses, a chicken on a stick and men dressed in women’s clothes. All very Footy Show, very laboured and very predictable. Choreographers who are able to convey emotions such as love, loneliness and loss with the lightest and most sensitive touch, cannot seem to avoid laying on the comedy with heavy hands.
Why is this? Could it be that ballet, like opera, usually deals with the big issues, life, love and death. Perhaps the choreographers feel that if the comedy is too small and nuanced, it will be lost altogether. Certainly, I have seen smaller dance works which are genuinely funny; it’s the big showy productions where it all goes wrong.
So, to ‘The Silver Rose’, premiered in Brisbane by the Australian Ballet last Friday night. My admiration and enthusiasm for the work of Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon is boundless and virtually unextinguishable. Murphy’s choreography, particularly for trios and couples, is sublime; Janet Vernon’s understanding of character and how to portray it onstage is uncanny, so my expectations were high. Then I read the programme and learned that the ballet is based on an opera by Richard Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier. Thus, I knew the plot would be very complicated requiring a flowsheet to keep up with who was in love with whom and why. I can deal with that – it will be good exercise for my fast evaporating network of neuronal pathways. However, when I read Murphy’s comment that
“Much of The Silver Rose verges on slapstick. It’s a great opportunity to introduce comedy, a much maligned and often unused aspect of dance”
my heart sank. But then again, maybe, just maybe, Murphy could pull it off. Wrong …
Act 1 featured the Three Camp Brothers: hairdresser, makeup artist and couturier all arrived wearing tight breeches, fluttering lace handkerchieves and minced their way around the stage in a swirl of fussily twitchy mannerisms which left the audience underwhelmed. Meanwhile, the heroine’s young lover,Octavian, forced to hide behind a screen to avoid discovery, eventually reappears wearing his lover’s clothes, complete with a pair of lacy knickers on his head. Don’t tell me that doesn’t get funnier every time you see it. Does the villainous Baron Ochs fall in lust with the hideous transvestite? Of course he does. Laugh? I thought I’d kill myself.
Act 2, gloriously costumed and choreographed, happily passes with only one brief appearance from the aforesaid “maid”, but Act 3 makes up for that. Tell me, what do you think when the curtain rises to reveal a large bed with three huge stuffed and mounted stag’s heads on the wall? I’ll tell you. In the words of the great musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, you think “comedy tonight”! And sure enough, a feast of slapstick is required as evil Baron Ochs is firmly put in his place by Octavian and his merry band of pranksters. Turkeys are worn on heads, arms and legs appear mysteriously from the bed and go the grope and the stag’s heads – well you really should go and see it for yourself.
The Australian Ballet, under the artistic direction of David McAllister is in a sweet spot these days. The dancers are strong, expressive and brilliant, costumes and sets magnificent, and Murphy and Vernon are at the peak of their powers. I must also mention the music, by Australian composer Carl Vine which is fabulous. Despite my nitpicking about the comedy turns, I enjoyed The Silver Rose immensely, and will be going twice more. Once to see Madeleine Eastoe, my favorite dancer, back on stage after a year away, and then to see Lucinda Dunn again, dancing the part of the aging heroine with supreme confidence and a beautifully conveyed sense of loss and aging.
My name is Lindy and I am a balletoholic, and I have no intention whatsoever of recovering from this addiction. You are more than welcome to join me.
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