Northern Ballet has a mighty reputation when it comes to performing ground-breaking ballets, full of super dancing and with a firm emphasis, too, on strong acting and storytelling that add broader appeal. Their inspiring repertoire includes classics with new twists like Nutcracker and Romeo and Juliet, which skip along beside more recent innovations like A Christmas Carol, 1984, Victoria, Jane Eyre and Merlin.
In their impressive repertoire, too, are top-class productions, devised exclusively for children. Three Little Pigs, Tortoise and Hare, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Elves and the Shoemaker and The Ugly Duckling have met with award-winning success and have also been adapted for TV’s CBeebies, with some shown in cinemas, too. The latest children’s ballet, forty minutes long, is Hansel and Gretel, but, though it’s definitely Grimm up North, there’s no stinting when it comes to staging, costumes, lighting, dance and the glorious joy of live music.
This, though, is not Hansel and Gretel as we’ve traditionally known them: there’s no wicked step-mother, no evil witch getting shoved in the oven and burnt to death after luring the lost, starving children to her tasty gingerbread house in the woods, intending to fatten them up and eat them for supper. No, there’s none of that (regrettably?) The children’s T-shirts, worn with cargo pants, do have H and G written on them, but these quibbling siblings live in our modern world with a caring dad, a dad increasingly frustrated as the two argue and fight over their games consoles.
Harris Beatties and George Liang, previous performers in these children’s ballets, have choreographed the lively dance for this production and, as the modern-day story unfolds, pleasing music, composed by pianist Colin Scott, is played delightfully on clarinet, flute, keyboard and cello. With fabulous cello solo and wind combinations ringing changes in mood and texture, moving from ragtime to soulful lyricism and tuneful, springtime bounce, Abbi Fearnley’s colourful lighting and Ali Allen’s neat and handsome set and costumes further enhance proceedings. The fine costumes, admirably created from repurposed materials, give discarded items new life – just as previous generations used to do daily as a matter of course, of course.
The children live in a claustrophobic, modern, urban world, in which media and gaming are top of the agenda and where everything in their home and town is a monochrome background of busy patterns. It’s only when the pair get lost in the stylized woods (purely by accident) that colour and the vibrancy of real life start to enter their lives. First a pair of bizarre, camouflaged birdwatchers with glasses and oversized binoculars turn up to show the children how to live in fluting harmony with birds and nature, for they haven’t a clue. Next, an elegant woodland ballerina educates them out of strewing litter in the woods, while a monster, made entirely of hundreds of plastic bottles and with intense lights for eyes, turns up to be endearingly scary until turning into a handsome prince. A woodland-tepee-dwelling, plant-loving lady teaches them how to nurture growth and fill the world with life before helping them get back home to their worried dad. Here she rids dad of his earpiece while the children fill their home and surroundings with plants and colour (especially green); even dad’s shirt takes on a touch of colour. So now they can all live happily ever after, just as the original Hansel and Gretel did once they’d killed off the wicked witch and got to home to find their horrid step-mum had died.
This Hansel and Gretel dance out a message that’s relevant to our current, real world rather than offering escapism into a fictional world of scary horrors and extreme emotions, and it’s great to see so many children in today’s world sharing the uplifting, creative joys and beauty of top-class live performance.
Eileen Caiger Gray
