Malcolm Rippeth (lighting designer), Lesley Sharp (narrator)
Fairy tales have been universally loved for centuries. They have stayed alive from their original book form to being both sanitised and condensed to animated film form but no less loved for all that. balletLORENT has gone back to the roots of the story of Rapunzel from the Brothers Grimm for this beautiful and sensuous production.
Against the magnificent and malleable set from Phil Eddolls that looks like a Margaret MacDonald gesso brought to life, the dark tale of yearning and loss; revenge and control; love and desire is played out in the trademark style of intense physicality from balletLORENT. Eddolls use of a red motif is in bright contrast to the costume colours whose innovative design belies their dun hue and the back screen allows for season and mood change as well as housing jaggy gothic silhouettes to mirror the vicious hair shearing scene.
This is a re-telling of the story of the girl with the long copper locks who was held in a tower by the witch who was her false mother. The girl’s father had made a fateful deal over his theft of a salad vegetable that his wife craved so passionately. It is written in gorgeous prose by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and narrated by Lesley Sharp. In it, Duffy makes the bereft mother the author of her daughter’s fate by allowing her to imagine a life for her stolen child as she reaches puberty. These nightly writings become a self- fulfilling prophesy that allows Rapunzel’s real parents to play a role throughout as her past and imagined future is plaited through the text. Duffy’s sensitivity recognizes the witch’s femininity running beside her cruel desire in her line “…she was a woman and knew very well what cravings… might mean.”
From the unidentifiable fawning and crawling creatures who strain at the leash of the witch whose strength and power is almost palpable, to the hair swirling Rapunzel, named after rampion, the herb her mother craved, these dancers entranced. The music from Murray Gold, played by him and the Northern Sinfonia, was the perfect accompaniment to reflect the mood changes over the piece.
The group of young dancers who were cast from an open audition in Edinburgh earlier in the year, along with the delightful and astonishing appearance of 3 energetic toddlers, performed impressively alongside the professional dancers of balletLORENT. From the abandoned joy of play and maypole dancing to the scootering, heelying and hula hooping, their natural abandon chimed perfectly with the company’s style of “seemingly spontaneous” movement.
balletLORENT has created an exquisite tale of fantasy full of expressive muscular movement where the recognisable heart wrenching consequences of what someone will do for the love of another plays out from tragedy to redemption. The final metaphor of the loveless witch as “lifeless and leafless” tree is laden with poignancy.
19 & 20 September