The Royal Ballet: Les Enfants Terribles, London, January 2017

[zxDaveM]

Foteini Christofilopoulou was at the rehearsal for Javier de Frutos' 'Les Enfants Terribles' at the Barbican. Here are some photos:


Zenaida Yanowsky, Gemma Nixon, Jonathan Goddard, Edward Watson
© Foteini Christofilopoulou. Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr
 

Zenaida Yanowsky, Edward Watson
© Foteini Christofilopoulou. Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr


Clemmie Sveaas, Thomasin Gülgeç, Edward Watson, Zenaida Yanowsky, Gemma Nixon, Kristen McNally, Thomas Whitehead, Jonathan Goddard
© Foteini Christofilopoulou. Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr
 
See more...

Set from DanceTabs:  RB: Les Enfants Terribles
Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr
By kind permission of the Royal Opera House

[lyn]

So, it's a very nice visual and audial menagerie, but you really don't need the likes of Zen and Ed to pull it off.. and especially knowing what these two could have otherwise done with these themes, it is quite the let down.

[Melody]

I looked at the whole set over at Flickr, and saw one where the set included the words "What's happening?" and I sort of thought that pretty well summed it up. I'm sure it's interesting, but from those photos it looks like a nightmare come to life.

[Jan McNulty]

I really enjoyed the performance tonight. I loved the music and the movement but I gave up any idea of trying to work out what was happening after about 2 minutes. I found some of the imagery to be very powerful.

 

All the cast members were really well matched and all the dancers have a similarly magnetic stage presence. For me, it was a stellar cast.

 

I'm very glad I went.

[alison]

How do you know whether it summed it up if you haven't seen it, Melody?

[Sim]

I agree with Lyn; a huge opportunity missed. I mean, Watson, Goddard, Yanowsky on the same stage, this could and should have been amazing, but they were disappointingly underused. This could have been a masterclass in exploring deeply disturbing psychological themes, but it was too messy for any development of the characters or the emotional disturbances within them. If you didn't know the story you are none the wiser at the end, despite some narration and surtitles during the sung bits. The lack of clarity wasn't helped by the two main characters having four incarnations each. The stage was too often cluttered with people to the point where I couldn't focus on any of them. I kept imagining what an amazing story Ed and Zen could have told if left alone on that stage. I also was thinking that MacMillan would have done so much more with a story that has so much more depth than was conveyed here. It was an interesting concept, but it didn't work for me.

 

As an aside, Nikolai Tsiskaridze was sitting right in front of me and seemed very bemused by the whole thing!

[Coated]

I watched it as an opera and quite enjoyed it. I wasn't too enamoured with Paul, but the rest of the singing was pretty nifty and I loved the piano 'Orchestra'. I actually liked the multiple versions of characters and the odd dream like repetitions and thought the narrator worked beautifully.

 

I did watch the insight, so had a bit of an idea of the story. I thought the story itself was clear enough in the telling, especially when taking into consideration that it was based on a Cocteau film. But then I like that sort of stuff.

Edited January 29, 2017 by Coated

[Sim]

I think this may have been part of the problem I had with it, Coated.  I purposely did not do any reading or research beforehand (although I have read the book) as I wanted to go with an open mind (an approach I always take with McGregor's ballets too).  This piece was entitled "The Royal Ballet:  Les Enfants Terribles" so, silly me, I assumed it was going to be a dance piece with some sung components!  Had I known that it is essentially an opera with some dance components, maybe I would have enjoyed it more.  By the time I realised this was the case, about halfway through Act 1, it was too late for me to twist my head around to what I was actually watching.

 

Having said all this, the singers were really very good, and I liked the use of the visual projections.  I am not a huge Glass fan, but the score here was eminently 'listenable' for me.

 

As another aside....during the interval I went to look at the monitor screen that was showing the Glass concert in the hall, and I was lucky enough to turn up just on time to hear the wonderful Labeque sisters playing.  That enhanced the evening no end for me!

[MAB]

As an aside, Nikolai Tsiskaridze was sitting right in front of me and seemed very bemused by the whole thing!

 

Actually he really enjoyed it, impressed by the sets and was fascinated by Glass's music, says they don't hear it in Russia, but he felt the singers' French diction was poor (he's a French speaker), diction is ultra important in Russia.  He's a fan of Edward Watson by the way.

 

For myself I felt the choreography was constrained by the nature of the music, but perhaps I went more for the music than the dancing and went along expecting that the dance would be subsidiary to the music.  Always a treat for me to watch Yanovsky and Watson, so went home a happy bunny.

[John Mallinson]

Anyone going along expecting lots of steps or virtuoso dancing would have been disappointed. It was not that sort of thing at all. I thought it beautifully staged and performed by all. Hope it comes back at some point.

[lyn]

Hm, for some reason today's performance was much better! Perhaps they finally got to sink in to their roles, because it sure looked like most of the rehearsal time had to go into making sure they didn't get run into by a bathtub or squashed by a wall.

 

Zenaida had a really rich interpretation going on today, and they clearly amplified a lot of the subtleties like Gyula Nagy's Paul pretending to have been sleepwalking, or Paul Curievici's narrator pausing a lot more out of irritation.

 

Or, maybe they just really wore me down by my third viewing.

[Sim]

Maybe I would have got more out of it on a second viewing. If John's wish comes true maybe I will give it another go.

[RuthE]

This piece was entitled "The Royal Ballet:  Les Enfants Terribles" so, silly me, I assumed it was going to be a dance piece with some sung components!  Had I known that it is essentially an opera with some dance components, maybe I would have enjoyed it more.  By the time I realised this was the case, about halfway through Act 1, it was too late for me to twist my head around to what I was actually watching.

 

Had *I* known that that was the case, I'd have been massively more likely to buy tickets for it!  As it was, I didn't realise there were singers in it, and dismissed it because of my aversion to Philip Glass - but I'd go and support the Jette Parker Young Artists in almost anything, on principle!

[Sim]

Those JP artists were all of a really good standard, RuthE!  The quality of singing was a highlight for me.

[Ian Macmillan]

I went yesterday, thankfully somewhat prepared by the Insight event, so I was not totally mystified by what was going on.  Nonetheless, I tend to agree with others who felt that the multiplication of dancing personalities began to wear a bit thin and, I would say, rather dissipated the effect of the ending.  And given that the ROH had used that distinctive shot of Zenaida Yanowsky and Edward Watson for all its pre-publicity for the show, I would not mind betting that a fair number of people bought tickets under something of a misapprehension that it would be dance-heavy.  Nonetheless, I'm pleased that I saw it, though I'm not at all sure that I'd want to see this particular production repeated - and yesterday's performance was very well received, I must say, a good deal more than folk just being polite.

 

I trust I might be permitted to add that Ms Yanowsky does not look like someone contemplating retirement in 6 months or so - some gorgeous moments and, for the memory book, a picture of her perched on the edge of a bath during the Prologue cheekily and suggestively undressing a doll.  Naughty Zen!

 

And congratulations to one and all for coping with the repeated, seemingly random, going up and down steps and in and out of doors, windows, whatever - and remembering when beds or baths had to be pushed and to where.  Zany!  I wonder if any of them wore a Fitbit-type device one day, just to see what the step count was?

 

 

Edited to add:  Ms Ferri, whom I spotted during the Interval, had clearly decided to put a day off from Woolf Works to good use.

Edited January 30, 2017 by Ian Macmillan
Forgot this earlier.

[balletyas]

I was seduced by the posters into thinking that Ed and Zen would dominate and I was cross about that as it dawned on me that they were just components in an ensemble.  I'm much more of a ballet person than opera so found that a bit pretty tiresome and tuneless  and thought the singing uneven,  although i did like the actual music.  Thought the staging and production fabulous but just kept hoping that Ed and Z would get the stage to themselves for 5 minutes.  Very very frustrating.

[Duck]

I saw the performance on Saturday and enjoyed it.

 

I found it a very visual experience e.g., the flexible scenery that allowed for scene changes without interrupting the piece every time; the moment when the faces of the various Pauls, Lises, etc. where shown on the walls in a way that one picture blended into the next, illustrating that each of them were different facets of the same person; the scene towards the end that was reminiscent of the final supper.

When I was watching the recording of the Insight event, I was wondering whether I might find the various incarnations confusing. On stage, however, this generally worked well for me e.g., Paul sitting on a bed in different positions from upright to fully bent forward, hinting at his different states of being/ thinking/ feeling at the time. I liked the way the sleep walking was portrayed, and I took the various Pauls walking up and down the stairs as a symbol of its intensity and repetitiveness.

The way the relationships between Lise and Paul, Paul and Agathe and Lise and Michael were shown was rather imaginative e.g., Lise undressing the doll while sitting on top of the bathtub, Lise and Paul pulling off a layer of each other’s socks, all without ever showing too much flesh; Paul snuggling along Agathe’s arm; the short video clips that illustrated so beautifully the developing relationship between Lise and Michael.

 

Glass is one of my favourite composers, and so I really enjoyed the music. There was much more singing that I had expected, and so the narrator was hugely effective for me as he provided the background for and summary of the activity on stage.

 

I had bought the ticket specifically to see Edward Watson and Zenaida Yanowsky. This was the first time that I saw a piece by the Frutos, and while the dancing was different to what I would normally watch, I enjoyed the piece as the coming together of different art forms – dance, opera, theatre, video.

This was also the only event for which I did not return my ticket for resale, once I knew that I’d be leaving London. Now that Zenaida Yanowsky has announced her retirement for the end of this season, Les Enfants was, in all likelihood, the last time that I saw her live on stage – and for that reason alone, it was worth heading back to London.

 

edited for punctuation

Edited January 30, 2017 by Duck

[Vanartus]

Thank you for this really insightful review. Sadly I

missed it as I had to stay in Berlin an extra day. I gave my ticket to a friend who enjoyed it greatly albeit sometimes amused and confused by the multiple characters/roles!

Edited January 30, 2017 by Vanartus

[Melody]

How do you know whether it summed it up if you haven't seen it, Melody?

I said, or at least I was trying to say, that I thought it summed up what I saw in the photo set. Which looked exceedingly weird.

[Ian Macmillan]

I've just come across a review of Les Enfants Terribles out in the Bay Area.  It's not the same production as discussed above but it appears to have had some similarities - wheeled beds, projected film sequences, and it sounds as if it was even less dance-heavy than the De Frutos version.  So, for interest:

 

https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/opera-parallele/opera-paralleles-les-enfants-terribles-triumphs?utm_source=SFCV+Newsletter%2C+May+31%2C+2017&utm_campaign=SFCV+Newsletter%2C+May+31%2C+2017&utm_medium=email

 

(Excuse the URL - we've lost the shortening that used to occur in the software update.)