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INDEX
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Sadly Gay Edward II
by Philip Anson / September 23, 2000
On the Aisle
Birmingham Royal Ballet: Edward II
City Center, New York
(seen Sept. 23, 2000)
The advance publicity for the Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB)’s run of their new two-act ballet Edward II at New York’s City Center this autumn warned of graphic sexuality not suitable for children. The New York Times alerted readers that the show was “filled with sex and violence.” Promises, promises! Anyone who went to this show expecting erotic titillation would have been sorely disappointed. What the Brits offered New York was simply a lavishly mounted, innocuous evening of old-fashioned pantomime.
More’s the pity, since the ballet’s inspiration - Christopher Marlowe’s 1592 play Edward II, a sizzling tale of medieval love, lust, jealousy, and ambition - is chock full of sexy, dramatic possibilities.
To his credit, BRB artistic director and choreographer David Bintley foregrounded the story’s salient elements: the clash between Edward’s inherited public duty and his private heart’s desire; the need to produce an heir to the throne; the friction between Edward’s boyfriend Piers Gaveston, his wife Isabella, and the conservative barons; and the political struggle with perfidious France.
Great material, but each episode was illustrated in a painfully obvious and repetitive fashion. Gratuitous, time-filling numbers abounded and dance sequences went on far too long. For example, the long-haired rebellious barons, all dressed in studded leather body armour like a rock band, did endless war dances and a noisy Stomp-style routine on a metal table. Battle scenes were nothing but running back and forth through billowing stage smoke. The Grim Reaper frequently stalked across the stage doing a martial arts routine with his scyth -- the nadir of choreographic literalism.
The New York Times rightly called the group scenes “weak” and the choreography “disconcertingly uneven”. Every emotion and motivation was acted out at the level of Ballet 101: anger was represented by a clenched fist, despair by banging on the walls, menace by slithering across the floor like a snake. The cumulative effect was more like one of Marcel Marceau’s mimodramas than a ballet.
This was particularly frustrating since the BRB’s superb dancers were a crack team, clearly capable of handling anything. Their classical leaps, spins, and lifts were always gracefully and smoothly executed.
The tall, flexible Austrian principal Wolfgang Stollwitzer danced the title role, which he also created in 1995. If he looked bored with the role of perpetual martyr, who can blame him?
British principal Robert Parker was excellent as the sexy man-child Piers Gaveston. His Puckish character exhibited puppyish love for the King and contempt for the English barons. Unfortunately he was killed off at the end of the first act and his absence in the rest of the show was sorely felt.
Spanish principal Monica Zamora was dynamite in the role of Queen Isabella, Edward’s spurned and treacherous wife. She was always convincing, whether clinging to her indifferent husband or leading rebellious troops (making ridiculous trotting movements) into battle against him.
Beefy American principal Joseph Cipolla as Mortimer seduced the love lorn Isabella, and led the leather-clad barons in their risibly butch war dance.
Though the show tried to deal respectfully with the gay theme, the homo scenes were mawkish. Edward and Gaveston danced some touching, playful steps together, full of carefree adolescent fervor. But in general, their antics seemed fake and self-indulgent compared with the heterosexual, family values in the second act. The romance and seduction scenes looked like they were conceived by little old ladies trying to be politically correct.
Edward’s execution by red-hot poker up the bum should have been the show’s climax, but was flubbed. In the partial blackout after the gruesome coup de grace, one could clearly see the “dead” king and his executioners saunter offstage. The show should have ended there and cut its losses, but someone added a saccharine denouement with the new boy king Edward III and his child bride Philippa of Hainault playing with dolls. Oy!
The sets were beautiful and evocative. The English court was represented by bleak, tartanish, square panelling. The French court was panelled in warm yellow stone engraved with fleurs-de-lis. Costumes by Jasper Conran were fanciful, vivid, and sturdy. The bad guys were all leather queens, while the French were clad in a dazzling array of pastel suits and loose Isadora Duncanish frocks.
The score (recorded last year by the British CD label Hyperion) was composed by 61-year old John McCabe, a well-known British classical pianist and author (Alan Rawsthorne: Portrait of a Composer, Oxford University Press; and BBC Music Guide to Bartok’s Orchestral Works; BBC Music Guide to Haydn’s Piano Sonatas). The instrumentation and style were traditional, even derivative : pastoral oboes and strings reminiscent of Vaughan Williams and Britten for the love scenes, trumpets and drums reminiscent of Shostakovich and Prokofiev for the martial episodes. It was serviceable ballet music, consistently supporting the events on stage without making any profound or original statement. The BRB’s resident orchestra the Royal Ballet Sinfonia played vigorously and accurately under conductor Paul Murphy.
Yet when all is said and done, this ballet disappointed because it was out of synch with current sensibility. Bintley approached the gay theme as if it was new and dangerous -- but gay content in ballet (implied or explicit) is hardly revolutionary. Men in hefty codpieces touching each other has been standard balletic fare for a century. Contemporary choreographers have almost exhausted the subject. Bintley’s mawkish dance might have been daring 40 years ago, but we’ve come a long way since then.
Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake took Broadway by storm last year. It was a visionary revision, mixing traditional and new choreography, and laden with spell-binding beauty and wit, illuminating eternal truths about the human condition. Beside it, BRB’s Edward II looked like a feeble effort. Make no mistake, the BRB is clearly capable of greater things. It has great dancers and money to burn on gorgeous costumes and sets. We await an effort worthy of their good name.
Website: www.citycenter.org. Birmingham Royal Ballet website: www.brb.org.uk.
Copyright by Philip Anson
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