Music Arranged by
Leighton Lucas
and Hilda Gaunt
Choreography
and Direction by
Kenneth MacMillan
Designed by
Nicholas Georgiadis
Staging by
Monica Mason and
Monica Parker
The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by
Graham Bond
Manon
Leanne Benjamin
Des Grieux
Federico Bonelli
Lescaut
Martin Harvey
Monsieur GM
Gary Avis
Lescaut's mistress
Laura Morera
Madame
Genesia Rosato
The Gaoler
Thomas Whitehead
Beggar Chief
Steven McRae
Courtesans
Deirdre Chapman
Victoria Hewitt
Isobel McMeekan
Sian Murphy
Clients
Bennet Gartside
Alastair Marriott
Rupert Pennefather
Richard Ramsey
Henry St Clair
Old Gentleman
Philip Mosley
Artists of the Royal Ballet, students of the Royal Ballet School
|
Manon
by Jules Massenet
Royal Ballet
Covent Garden
04 - 26 Nov 2005
Leanne Benjamin is an affecting Manon: speakingly fragile, with wondrously fluent arms and fine intuition as an actress, she fixes the audience's gaze all the time she is on stage, and never fails to satisfy it with her accuracy and poise. It is a wonderful role for a ballerina of the right stamp, inviting exploration of a wide emotional range, and affording opportunities for real acting in the dance: the bedroom scene with its profoundly moving love duet, and the tragic denouement in the prison colony, are powerful moments, in which the meaning of ballet is disclosed with electric force.
Leanne Benjamin might have been one of the dancers upon whom MacMillan made the role, so apt is she for it in her own way. Matters were not quite the same with Federico Bonelli. He has a handsome presence, but in his solos on this evening he was finding it hard to balance, especially on landing from jumps. MacMillan is a genius at constructing beautiful and passionate pas des deux, but his work is sometimes awkward and unintuitive in solos, especially masculine ones, with angular reverse jumps and finicky steps that seem designed to test or even trip a dancer. He certainly managed to discompose Bonelli in his first solo, and the uneven choreography of the opening, with its stuttering and unconvincing arrival of the principals, was made more obvious by Bonelli's late warming to the part.
But MacMillan's exquisite duets saved him, partly no doubt because of the inspiring presence of Leanne Benjamin; and with such strong support from the rest of the troupe, especially Martin Harvey as an aggressive Lescaut, brilliant in the drunken scene, the production could not fail to please: and please it did.
What contributed greatly to this is the staging, and the attention to detail - both in the design and in the execution of the dance - which between them brought the story absorbingly to life. The scene in which the sick and weary exiled girls disembark in New Orleans is tellingly choreographed and danced, and one notices how expertly it frames the appearance, delayed for maximum effect, of Manon and Des Grieux at the top of the gangway. The piling of a Pelion of troubles on an Ossa of despair, in the form of the Gaoler's determination to appropriate Manon for himself, has the true relentless quality of tragedy - and the threads that link Manon to Tosca and other tales in which the steel gates of crime and inevitability slam forever behind hunted lovers are luminous in the quick-paced, frantic closing scenes, well-danced and, even more to the point, thoroughly well-acted by Benjamin and Bonelli.
There was not so much a rapport between the two as a good professional understanding, flowing from the ballerina to her young partner, which gave one the sense that hers was the sustaining achievement throughout. It is interesting to reflect how MacMillan's rendition of the tale offers different qualities to different pairings of dancers: think of Bussell and Cope in the roles, say, or Guillem and Acosta - each an event of its own kind. The point is not comparisons, but the endless variety that can be savoured in a tale as rich as this one.
AC Grayling
|
