Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
To anybody who has ever denied their true selves to live up to the expectations of another, the story of The Little Mermaid holds timelessly acute significance. The fable of a young sea-dwelling girl who falls in love with a human prince is one of the most frequently read and adapted fairytales in Western canon, so any new production has a broad spectrum of past interpretations to live up to. Luckily, director Hayley Thompson’s original choreographed work sets itself apart with its immersive use of dance, its enthusiastic chorus of dancers and the dreamlike quality of its storytelling.
The simple set is sparsely arranged, leaving plenty of room for the performers, and they fill it with confidence. The first two minutes of the show are striking, as a beguiling reading of Andersen’s original text by chorus member Emma Cooke gives way to a bold frenzy of movement, as almost every member of the cast spins and wheels to and fro, submerging the audience beneath the waves. From there, the pace continues to modulate between relative stillness and high energy, and handles both deftly.
The production only stumbles at the transitions between scenes, which, while technically competent, lack a flow that the scenes themselves demonstrate in abundance. The show’s gentle, lilting music, for example, suits the action which it accompanies perfectly, but when it occasionally suddenly fades out, the sudden quietness lends an odd tension to the room as the audience wonders if the tape has run out early. However, credit must go to the evocative lighting, which consistently reinforces moments of emotional and sensory impact, particularly during a skilfully operated lightning storm at sea.
The cast has no weak link, and the actors support each other so completely that it is difficult to single anyone out. However, those who get more time alone onstage make admirable use of it. Edith Kirkwood’s Sea Witch provides a refreshingly twisted injection of the sinister into the otherwise gentle seascape. George Viner’s Prince, as the only male presence in the play, handles the role with sympathy. While his failure to acknowledge the Mermaid’s affections begs the audience’s condemnation, Viner’s doe-eyed beneficence makes the Prince impossible to hate, removing any clumsy moral judgements of the ensuing love triangle.
However, of all these memorable moments, the most affecting is certainly the transformation. The Sea Witch reads out the punishing conditions of their agreement and Antonia Sandford takes centre-stage as the Little Mermaid, thrashing and writhing in an agonised fit. The audience hears of footsteps on shards of glass and sees Sandford’s Mermaid viscerally bound to feeble mortality and the pain of living and loving is suddenly and palpably invoked.
The only disappointment in the story’s translation to the stage is the abrupt ending. While it communicates the required information, it seems suddenly out-of-step with the pace of the rest of the show, and begs some final showpiece to communicate the Mermaid’s supreme sacrifice in the name of unquestioning love. The tone of the ending of Andersen’s story is already a matter of some controversy among scholars, and it is a shame that Thompson did not define her interpretation of its final moments more clearly. That said, Thompson and her team have created a deeply enjoyable dance oddity, in another example of the potential of the free Open Drama Night slot. Thompson has proven herself to be a capable and inventive dramatist with this first solo production, and I will be watching with interest to see what she devises next.
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