Birmingham Royal Ballet: The Tempest, October 2016

[Alice Shortcake]

And if you're already stealing, nick some of Rupert Goold's ideas from his RSC Tempest - like impressive but simple storm scenes without strobe lighting on steroids.

 

Ah, happy memories of one of the best Tempests I've ever seen. And Bintley's decision to leave a sobbing Ariel abandoned on the island made me long for the electrifying moment in Sam Mendes' RSC production when Ariel, reduced to serving Prospero as a uniformed houseboy, spat in his master's face when given his long-delayed freedom.

[zxDaveM]

I liked the fish people. Please bear in mind that my current TV diet consists of RuPaul's Drag Races.

 

That said, I neither hated nor loved the Tempest. As it is now, I probably wouldn't clamour to see it again.

 

I spent the first viewing enjoying the dancing, the second ruminating on why I don't get emotionally involved and skipped the third one to avoid getting too persnickety about elements of the staging. There was enough there to make me think that the Tempest can be done as a ballet, but not enough to make me care about the characters.

 

 

 

A) Rethink the set. There is no sense of location. What is a clever ship for the first 10-15 minutes becomes a hindrance for the rest of the performance. Overhearing a discussion in the intermission amongst a group of people who weren't familiar with the play seemed to confirm my opinion. Their assumption was that it all takes place underwater on a sunken ship.

 

 

 

C) Set the scene. Steal from Wheeldon if necessary - not the Garland dance though, or the second act of Winters Tale, just the clever backstory provision and scene setting at the beginning of his Winter's Tale (adapt for Tempest). Skip the merry sailor's jig on a sinking ship and replace it with the passengers interacting before the storm, a meal, a stroll on deck, anything that identifies them as a King, his son, 2 nobles and 2 servants. Done. Do the same for the island inhabitants, a simple scene with all 4 of them interacting, Prospero making Ariel perform some simple magic, Ariel tormenting Caliban for a bit of fun, Caliban ogling Miranda furtively, Miranda getting Caliban to peel the potatoes...

 

 

Yes, the flashback scene with the overthrow of Prospero, could have been part of a prologue that introduced the characters and their inter-relationships, before the proper action began.

Must confess having a large double-take when the people with the straw hats came on - such a mix of style or the characters, it made Sylvia's last act look tame!

Still, I did enjoy it overall, I can't deny.

[Jan McNulty]

Well I'm off to Sunderland tomorrow for another three viewings.

 

I wonder what I will think at the end of them.

 

Thinking back to two weeks ago my current conclusion is that this could be a very effective long one-acter.  Much of the set would have to be jettisoned but it would allow more concentration on the characterisations.

 

(And could we please have a new score by the likes of Carl Davis who actually composes tunes!)

 

What I absolutely would not change is the wonderful performances by the whole company.

[FLOSS]

i went to Birmingham to see Bintley's Tempest and came away thinking that it was a great waste of some very talented dancers who deserved a much better ballet than the one which had been devised for them. I was interested to read that Bintley had been thinking about creating this ballet for such a long time. I would like to think that if I had been thinking about creating a work of art for so long I would have made a better job of it. I almost felt that he protested too much about not having seen Nureyev's Tempest presumably because he wanted to establish that this ballet was all his own work.If he had seen it he might have been able to identify the essential elements of the play and the point at which the audience needs to know them in order to follow the action of the ballet.I don't claim to remember much about Nureyev's Tempest except that it was something of a mess for much the same reasons as Bintley's Tempest was.

 

I came away from the performance with the thought that Bintley's understanding of the play was extremely superficial and that he had assumed that the plot of the play was as well known to his audience as that of a Midsummer Night's Dream or Romeo and Juliet and that he had simply followed the structure of the play without asking himself how he could stage the action of the play in a way that would work in balletic terms.

 

Bintley failed to tell us who Prospero is,what he had once been; his part in conjuring up the storm and the part that the passengers on board the ship which he has just wrecked had played in his life. Information which Bill S gives his audience very early on in the play.There was no attempt to re-arrange the narrative so that it would work in balletic terms or to create a specific dance language for the characters or the situation they were in.He simply made the sort of dances he always does.

 

He departed from the narrative to give us an under water scene which was one of the more inventive elements in the ballet so why did not he devise a Prologue to tell the audience about Prospero's past and the part that a particular group of men had played in his fall from power?That way we would know about those men when we encounter them later on in the ballet and they would have appeared as individuals rather than as an undifferentiated group of men. I should have thought that an inventive use of lighting and scrims would have enabled Bintley to given us a Prologue followed by Prospero controlling the storm in which a ship sinks and Miranda's reaction to the ship wreck. Followed by Ferdinand under water his arrival on shore and his encounter with  Miranda. 

 

I can't help thinking that it was a mistake to show us Miranda and Ferdinand launching into a standard ecstatic pas de deux within seconds of meeting each other.There was no no nuance no hesitancy on Miranda's part and no element of awe on Ferdinand's part.In the play he asks Miranda if she is the goddess of the island, and I don't think that he does that to flatter. It was the first significant bit of choreography in the ballet and it struck a false note.

 

Bintley's invention failed him when we encountered the King, the usurper Duke and the courtiers on shore. Who they were was unclear to anyone who did not know the play. The King expressed his sorrow by putting his hands to his face but where was the sorrowful body language? It seemed to be a case of get the dumb show over as quickly as possible. It did not look as if Bintley had asked someone who was not actively involved in producing the ballet into the rehearsal room to see if what he had devised carried the story effectively.

 

Then there was the masque.It did not look as if Bintley had really thought about this at all except to ask for a lot of music for it. The dance movement was not sufficiently differentiated from what had gone before to set the dancers in the masque apart as spirits. Again why did he think it necessary to add Pan to the goddesses selected by Shakespeare as appropriate to marriage celebrations? His Pan had a lot of Will Mossop about him as far as his choreography was concerned.I can't help thinking that Bintley should have thought long and hard about this sequence and provided Ceres and Juno with attendants rather than using a generic corps who at times looked as if they had escaped from the last act of Ondine. I can't help thinking that Bintley should have shown the audience the goddesses conferring blessings on Ferdinand and Miranda and at the end of the masque the royal couple joining in a dance of harmony with the goddesses and their attendants.It would have given the masque a theatrical purpose which it lacked in the ballet.

 

As far as the music is concerned I don't think the ballet would be saved by a lush audience friendly score as the real weakness of the ballet lies in the narrative structure selected by Bintley and in his staging of the story rather than the music. Sally Beamish's score it is pretty innocuous and almost instantly forgettable. I assume it was written according to Bintley's instructions and to timings supplied by him. Again I assume that the design of sets and costumes was largely dictated by Bintley's decisions about the elements of the play that would work in balletic terms and how they should be staged. Unfortunately I don't think that it would be improved by being reduced to a one act work.   

Edited October 19, 2016 by FLOSS

[Alice Shortcake]

I came away from the performance with the thought that Bintley's understanding of the play was extremely superficial and that he had assumed that the plot of the play was as well known to his audience as that of a Midsummer Night's Dream or Romeo and Juliet and that he had simply followed the structure of the play without asking himself how he could stage the action of the play in a way that would work in balletic terms.

Absolutely!

 

 

Again why did he think it necessary to add Pan to the goddesses selected by Shakespeare as appropriate to marriage celebrations?

It really irritated me that Bintley has upgraded this minor deity of shepherds and wild places to the god of drink and revelry. Bacchus must be feeling a bit miffed.

 

I can't help thinking that Bintley should have shown the audience the goddesses conferring blessings on Ferdinand and Miranda and at the end of the masque the royal couple joining in a dance of harmony with the goddesses and their attendants.It would have given the masque a theatrical purpose which it lacked in the ballet.

Yes, a thousand times yes! Edited October 20, 2016 by Alice Shortcake

[Jan McNulty]

I saw three performances in Sunderland and all three casts.

 

While I still intensely dislike the straw hats dance and find most of the goddess' dances a waste of time I now like about 75% of Act 2.  I have still enjoyed act 1 tremendously.  I think I would move the section showing how Prospero was usurped to a prologue with the hint of a repeat in the scene where Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian are shown their crimes and I would cut about 20 minutes out of act 2.  I think a more obvious wedding scene would be nice too.

 

Whatever my reservations about the production (and they have lessened with time) what you cannot take away from the dancers is the glorious performances that we have been treated to!  Momoko Hirata, especially, fleshes out Miranda; her tiniest gestures give meaning and her facial expressions are exquisite.

 

I am fortunate that I have been able to see six performances and, while I have loved Act 1 from the start, have come to appreciate the whole production more with each viewing.  All the casts have grown more into the roles too.  Most people only go once to a production and perhaps Artistic Directors should take a step back and look at a piece with one-time-viewers eyes.

 

I will go and see The Tempest again when it is revived and I am sure Mr Bintley will have done his usual tweaking.

[bridiem]

 

 

I am fortunate that I have been able to see six performances and, while I have loved Act 1 from the start, have come to appreciate the whole production more with each viewing.  All the casts have grown more into the roles too.  Most people only go once to a production and perhaps Artistic Directors should take a step back and look at a piece with one-time-viewers eyes.

 

 

Good point, Janet. But I don't understand how any work gets on stage - especially a big three-acter - without someone taking that step back and seeing it with the eyes of someone coming to it fresh, and who needs to know what is going on, who the people are, what ideas are being conveyed, and whether all this is happening with any degree of success. I think that The Tempest needs a lot more than tweaking - it needs a complete restructure and rethink. Much as I have always had great admiration for David Bintley, I think that perhaps he creates too many works nowadays and needs to step back himself in order to free up his imagination again. (Though I did love The King Dances, which was fresh and interesting and imaginative.)

[Two Pigeons]

Hear, hear bridiem . Like you I am an admirer of DB and much of his work. I am also very grateful to him for so much that he has achieved as a director. I really do not wish for his body of work, especially his earlier pieces, to be devalued because he has attempted too much in these later years.

[aileen]

I think that this shows how tremendously difficult it is to create an effective full length ballet from scratch rather than produce a new version of Cinderella, Nutcracker, Swan Lake etc using the traditional score. Many famous ballets and famous productions were substantially altered / re-worked before they became hits.

[Scheherezade]

A somewhat belated comment, having seen, and been somewhat disappointed by, the opening Sadlers Wells performance of The Tempest which, to me, seemed over-populated, under-developed and woefully sold short by music that did nothing to enhance the plot and characterisation and everything to create an air of tedium. All the more disappointing after the fabulous Shakespeare triple bill in which the dancing, music and costumes in each, very different piece, all came together exquisitely to enhance the overall mood, energy and narrative.

[Sim]

I agree...I much preferred the triple bill.