La Fille Mal Gardee, The Royal Ballet, 09/03/2010, 18/03/2010, 21/04/2010

It is a sign of just how good this production is, that at my third performance, I was still laughing just as hard as at my first, and clapping just as enthusiastically until the very end of the curtain calls.

The perfect concoction of witty choreography, pantomime and warm-hearted delectably twee romance. Frederick Ashton tells us the story of Lise, the only daughter of a wealthy widow, who is in love, against her mother's wishes, with a young farmer Colas. Her mother would rather see her married to Alain, the idiot son of a rich landowner. We watch the fun and games unfold as Lise and Colas cheekily defy her mother, enjoy the gaiety of harvest-time and, and finally we see them united as we know they inevitably will be from the moment the curtain goes up.

Ashton's choreography is genius, timed perfectly with the nuances in the music; OTT yet tongue-in-cheek, this really is charming. The whole production is full of humourous surprises. Certainly you don't come to the Royal Ballet with the expectation of seeing dancing chickens and a real horse on stage! While the treatment of the character of Alain is perhaps ever so slightly un-P.C, on the whole the right balance is struck between sympathy and humour, and Jose Martin and Liam Scarlett both danced and acted very well. The comedy star of the show is the Widow Twanky of the pantomime, Widow Simone, played by Will Tuckett and Alastair Marriott, both to great effect. Her clog dance in Scene 2 is absolutely hilarious, with Will Tuckett going completely all out, slides, heel clicks, buckling ankles. Brilliant.

I am priveliged enough to have seen three different casts, Marianela Nunez with Carlos Acosta, and both Laura Morera and Alina Cojocaru with Stephen McRae. Nunez and Acosta were the most consumate  and confident performers. Not a partnership that we see often, they dance this piece very well together; the wittiest of the three couples by quite some margin. Also, Colas is a perfectly smug role for Acostas. Nunez and Morera dance very similar interpretations - youthful, cheeky, but not completely naive - whereas Cojocaru plays a far more childish, innocent (although not without a touch of stubbornness) Lise. McRae was on top form both performances, although he seemed to have better chemistry as Colas with Laura Morera than for Cojocaru; this pair getting an extremely enthusiastic response from the normally quiet Tuesday night audience.

This is a ballet of many props, and Lise and Colas certainly have some tricky props to contend with throughout the ballet, most notably a veritable cats cradle with ribbons in Act 1. This was met with varying degrees of success, and only Nunez and Acosta pulled all the ribbon antics off seamlessly right through to Nunez rock solid en attitude as the rotating centre of the may pole in scene 2. Cojocaru and McRae more or less got there, although wobbled at the may pole in scene 2, but McRae and Morera got the ribbon so tangled in scene 1 that in the they had to ditch it all together! However, it's all part of the fun, and when it goes wrong, it certainly doesn't detract from the rest of the evening.

La Fille Mal Gardee provides unabated fun and games, with lovely dancing, clever antics and charming humour from start to finish. Really one of the best things I've seen at the ROH for a long time, and certainly my favourite Ashton. As the friend I went with said, and quite rightly - "you just come out bouncing!"

The Sleeping Beauty, The Royal Ballet 24/11/2009

Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty is a 'chocolate box ballet' not entirely dissimilar to the Nutcracker. The set and costumes are overwhelmingly sweet and fluffy, almost entirely in sugary pinks, lilacs, powder blues and whites. The dancing too is frilly, and showy, much more about technique and physical ability than drama or emotional performance.

With a prologue and three acts, Beauty is a long production, and the glue that holds all acts together is the Lilac Fairy who engineers the plot and guides the audience through the story. In the prologue, she and her fairy troupe defend the infant Princess Aurora from the wicked Carabosse and his troupe of evil rats (!). In Act I she ensures that Aurora only sleeps after pricking the fated finger, in Act II she guides Prince Florimund to his sleeping princess, and in Act III she oversees the frivolous celebrations following their marriage. Unfortunately, Laura McCulloch's Lilac Fairy felt tired and heavy throughout. She was outshone by a spritely Akane Takada (Fairy of the Enchanted Garden) and the regal and refined Laura Morera (Fairy of the Golden Vine). In fairness the choreography for the Lilac Fairy's prologue solo is cumbersome in places, and particularly for a tall dancer like McCulloch, doesn't exactly lend itself to a graceful and spritely performance.

Lilac Fairy aside, things picked up dramatically in Act I with appearance of the wonderful Marianela Nunez. Flashing, exuberant, she woke the audience up with probably the best Rose Adagio I have seen yet. I find watching Nunez so easy - I never feel like I need to worry about her falling off balance, or missing a turn, which meant that although I was still on the edge of my seat during the series of nail-biting balances, I could actually really enjoy them for a change. She is perfectly suited to flashy technical roles such as this and was a real joy to watch.Sadly, Thiago Soares's standards were not quite up to the same dizzy heights. He danced reasonably enough but seemed oddly unsteady on his feet.

In Act II, the dream sequence engineered by the Lilac Fairy to introduce Florimund to the sleeping Aurora has strong echoes of Swan Lake, and is probably the better for it - it is the first proper departure from twee glitzy fairytale into the more ethereal world of ballet magic. However, this Act ends in a hurry, with no real sense that the Prince has battled with or done anything to deserve his Princess prize. He is merely guided through some drapes by the Lilac Fairy, finds the sleeping beauty, kisses her, pops the question and then the curtains fall. I can't help but feel that this section needs reworking - he needs some torturing, some challenges en route, rather than being sheepishly led past Carabosse by the Lilac Fairy.

Following on from Act II comes the ridiculous Act III; a series of dances completely unrelated to the story of Sleeping Beauty - indeed Aurora and Florimund have to come and stand at the back of the stage for a minute or so purely to remind you they still exist. I enjoy some of the dances in this Act, but I feel like they should be in a separate ballet, or else somehow merged with the Prologue or tagged onto Act II. Red-riding hood (pictured) and Puss-in-boots could easily be pruned, but Laura Morera and Kenta Kura were fantastic as Princess Florine and the Bluebird, and Sergei Polunin, Akane Takada and Yuhui Choe were also eye-catching as Florestan and his sisters (even if Choe lacked a bit of her usual energy), and it would be a shame to lose these dances.

Sleeping Beauty is at it's exuberant best when Princess Aurora is on stage; the rest is padding..and there's rather too much of it. Acts I and II are the definite highlights, but the prologue and Act III could do with some reworking. However, as a very traditional Petipa ballet that is unlikely to happen. It could be made less of a twee chocolate box ballet with some production changes - would it not feel more magical if the fairies were more earthy and ethereal (perhaps more like something out of a Midsummer Night's Dream?) rather than in pastel tutus? And Carabosse would feel far more malevolent without rodents for minions! Go, enjoy the spectacle, and the technical flashiness, but don't expect to be swept off your feet by the story.