Review - LA FILLE MAL GARDEE at the Birmingham Hippodrome until Sunday, June 15.

 

CHOREOGRAPHER Frederick Ashton’s idealised image of his beloved English countryside was a land in which it was permanently late spring and the skies were always sunny.

It was therefore fitting that Birmingham Royal Ballet’s choice of month to stage La Fille mal gardee should have been June, the greenest time of the year in England when the days seem to go on forever.

This is one of the world’s oldest ballets and therefore closest to the folk traditions from which so much of the art draws its influences.

It was a natural choice for Ashton, yet the irony is that it was actually conceived and first performed in Bordeaux, France, in 1789.

But under his direction, it is the glorious paganism of a lost old England that bursts across the boards. He breathes new life into age-old morris, maypole and clog, bestowing the dancers with mercurial powers as they swirl like so many whirligig beetles on the stillness of a summer pond.

Set against this background and Osbert Lancaster’s stylised pastoral designs is a story of love’s triumph over the odds.

The slow burn of emotion between Nao Sakuma and Cesar Morales as the young lovers Lise and Colas slowly builds, their pas des deux increasingly reflecting the intensity of their affections.

Morales is a very neat, precise dancer and his pairing with BRB favourite Sakuma was a very wise casting choice indeed.

Their performances are powered by the music of Ferdinand Herold who gloriously evokes the labour of the harvest field one moment and the comic chaos of the village green the next.

However, the pain and the pathos is also greatly leavened by the comic content supplied in abundance by Michael O’Hare’s Widow Simone and Mathias Dingman as Alain, the rival suitor for Lise’s hand.

There are some fabulously amusing moments as O’Hare careers, staggers and stumbles across the stage. He throws everything into the mix… there are echoes of Chaplin, Keaton and even Old Mother Riley in his hilarious portrayal of the crone from hell.

As for Dingman, he supplies the visual gags by the country cartload. He is the ultimate blockhead, making all other the village idiots in history appear like geniuses by comparison.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Payn as Alain’s father Thomas, struts around like some overweight cockerel scratching on a dung heap, deluded into thinking that he can match his halfwit son with the delectable Lise.

But comedy apart, this is above all a tale of the heart arriving at its rightful destiny despite the many rocks strewn across the path.

And it must surely be the achingly beautiful dancing of the star-crossed lovers that linger longest in the memory.

La Fille mal gardee runs until Sunday (June 15). Don’t miss it.

John Phillpott