Hamlet (WYP, 10/09/11)

basics...
It's only a few short months since I last saw a production of Hamlet at the Playhouse, but I found myself at another last weekend - a ballet version no less. I saw this in my new capacity as a front of house volunteer at the theatre, which means in return for standing around for a bit showing people to their seats at the beginning and during the interval, I get to sit and watch a play for free! 

brilliant...
I'm sure the dancing was excellent, and there were some genuinely exciting bits. However...

but...
I didn't hate the show, but as my last trip to the ballet taught me, I'm not a fan. I like words. And I know Hamlet - this was a very strange version. It was set in Nazi occupied France rather than Denmark - I only worked this out at the end when Fortinbrass liberated the country as the beginning 20 mins was a confusing mess. At least it was to someone who knows the play and didn't recognise what was going on or who was who. I also don't remember Ophelia getting gang-raped and then murdered in the play... I'm all for new interpretations of Shakespeare but being a ballet was new enough without causing more confusion by playing with key elements of the story. 

briefly...
Probably great if you like ballet. I don't. I enjoyed it more because I didn't have to pay to see it. Ballet really is just posh mime.

Giselle (27/05/11, The Grand, Leeds)

We had never seen a 'proper' ballet before, so we picked Giselle. Previously we'd seen a ballet/dance version of Dracula at the West Yorkshire Playhouse that didn't blow me away, and a modern dance interpretation of The Picture of Dorian Gray in Edinburgh, which was intriguing and hot. Giselle conforms more to what I think a ballet is. The closest I've come to such previously would be watching the excellent Black Swan, and the musical Billy Elliott.

Coming off a week of a head cold and sat in an over-warm theatre (the ice cream seller told me that the heat's turned up for the benefit of the dancers) meant that I found my lids drooping on occasion during the first act and so I may not have been in the best condition for judging what I saw. However, I have determined that I don't think ballet is for me. It feels like ballet is a world that you really have to know, that isn't accessible to people like me who dip in with no background knowledge. If I hadn't read the act synopses in the programme beforehand I would not have been able to follow all that was going on, particularly in the second act. 

I think I need my drama and plot articulating, either through lines of dialogue or song lyrics, as I find it hard to interpret the mime of ballet. Oh it all looked very pretty and the dancing appeared excellent (though I have no frame of reference to say otherwise) but it all felt a bit like showing off. I thought well fair enough you can dance beautifully, but so what, what does that do to further to story? My emotions weren't stirred as I was either trying to figure out who was who and what they were doing or I was ignorant of what I was supposed to be feeling. The live music, for which the Grand takes out the first 3 rows of stalls and employs a much larger orchestra than normal, was brilliant, and I enjoyed the second act's dancing if not the story. The tale of Giselle - she falls for a nobleman dressed as a peasant (why he's dressed like this is unknown) who is betrothed to another, when she finds out she dies of a broken heart, and then rises from the grave to dance with him, for some reason - is tragic when written down but becomes fairly inconsequential when spun out into over-long dances. I will stick to the drama of Black Swan in future I think.

Black Swan (2010)

2011 continues to impress in the world of cinema, this time with the creepy, psychological horror Black Swan. Masquerading as a drama about a ballet dancer who seems to gradually crack under the pressure of being the lead in Swan Lake, the movie is actually an unsettling chiller and one of the best horror movies I've seen in a while. 

Natalie Portman is excellent in the lead, ably supported by Eliza-Dushku-as-Faith-alike Mila Kunis in the role of her nemesis/double/dark side/what-the-fuck?!, with Barbara Hershey as creep personified as her pushy mother in a small but memorable role. Vincent Cassel is reassuringly Gallic as the ballet director, pushing Portman to breaking point in order to get her to play the role of Black Swan convincingly. 

Black Swan is one of those movies you can't stop discussing as you leave the cinema, talking about how great it is and also comparing notes on what you think it was all about. There were no definitive answers as to why Portman was seeing images of herself reflected in mirrors in different poses, or why she had a fantasy about sleeping with Kunis, or why Winona Ryder kept stabbing herself in the face with a nail file! It was real (cliché alert) edge of the seat stuff that had me squirming and occasionally watching through my fingers. The film really gets inside your head and toys with what you're expecting while drawing you in with masterful direction and a gorgeous score, adapted from Swan Lake. I hope every movie I watch at the cinema (and at home for that matter) is as good as this and the others I've seen this January.

Billy Elliot: The Musical (11/06/10, Grand Opera House, York)

The movie Billy Elliot is sweet and very, very funny, with a cracking soundtrack, none of which is used in the musical! That doesn't matter though, I enjoyed it thoroughly, despite some dodgy sound problems. It turned out that the performance we'd booked to see wasn't actually a touring version of the West End hit, rather it was a version by the Billy Youth Theatre, set up in York especially for this show. I was concerned when I realised this after reading the programme that it might be terribly amateurish and full of wooden child performances. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Henry Rhodes, who played young Billy, was phenomenal. His dancing left me speechless and wanting to rise out of my seat applauding, and the same went for pretty much everyone else in the cast. I have to say that a week later I don't really remember the songs, although at the time I was tapping along with them (this probably says more about my goldfish memory than the show), yet I do remember the dancing, the energy, and emotion that was purveyed through it, and the hilarious numbers that Billy's gay-in-making mate Michael performed. The latter, played by Josh Benson, surely a star in the making, stole every scene he appeared in, and the song Expressing Yourself was full of delightful moments between the two boys and had some of the most fun choreography.

Act I

• The Stars Look Down - Company
• Shine - Ballet Girls, Mrs. Wilkinson & Mr Braithwaite
• Grandma's Song - Grandma
• Solidarity - Ballet Girls, Billy, Mrs. Wilkinson, Miners & Police
• Expressing Yourself - Billy, Michael, and Ensemble
• The Letter - Mrs. Wilkinson, Mum and Billy
• Born to Boogie - Mrs. Wilkinson, Billy, and Mr. Braithwaite
• Angry Dance -Billy & Male Ensemble

Act II

• Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher - Tony and Partiers.
• Deep into the Ground - Jackie
• Swan Lake-Billy and Billy Older Self
• He Could be a Star - Jackie and Tony
• Electricity - Billy
• Once We Were Kings - Company
• The Letter (Reprise) - Mum and Billy
• Finale - Company

Despite what I said above, looking at the set list, I do remember Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher! It was great fun. The other side of the musical, and the source movie, apart from the ballet is the serious business of the pit closures in the 1980s. I felt that in the musical there was more anger and deeper social comment than in the movie, and it worked well with the contrasting dance scenes - when the miners and ballet girls all mingled in one big dancer number it was very effective. There was some earthy language coming out of the mouths of the children, and on stage it can be quite shocking, especially when the little girl asks Billy if he wants to see her fanny! This line was lifted from the movie directly, but it's much more shocking when the little girl is 5 rows in front of you, I must say. 

I left the theatre elated and amazed by the wonderful performances by the child actors and dancers in Billy Elliot, and I would happily go and watch it again.