United Kingdom Sir Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée: Dancers of The Royal Ballet, Orchestra of the Royal Opera Home / Jonathan Lo (conductor). Broadcast dwell (directed by Ross MacGibbon) from the Royal Opera Home, Covent Backyard, to Cineworld Basildon, Essex, 5.11.2025. (JPr)
I’ll – with out apology – draw closely on a evaluate I wrote about La Fille mal gardée in 2018 as a result of my response to watching it once more – 45 years after seeing Sir Frederick Ashton’s ballet on the Royal Opera Home (with a number of different performances in between) was nearly equivalent. As soon as once more, I had puzzled ‘Do I really want to see it once more?’. Nicely, I needn’t have frightened because it was the identical marvellously fun-filled and exuberantly danced ballet I noticed once more in 2018 and all these years in the past at Covent Backyard for the very first time.
With every technology of dancers, I’ve typically loved watching one ballerina greater than every other. Through the years it has been The Royal Ballet’s Lesley Collier, Miyako Yoshida and Marianela Núñez most of the time and all three have been excellent Lises in La Fille. On this efficiency it was great to look at Francesca Hayward show she is equally pretty much as good as these exalted predecessors within the position. Hayward might need now not been with The Royal Ballet had the film model of Cats not been such a catastrophe; together with her Victoria the White Cat being one of many higher issues in it.
The triumph of this whole efficiency of La Fille was that on not one of the dancers’ faces did you see them pondering ‘How do I would like to maneuver my legs and arms subsequent?’ Hayward moved as instinctively as any of them and was all the time in character as a fascinating Lise. Ashton’s difficult Bournonville- and Bolshoi-inflected choreography didn’t seem to problem her, although I’m positive it did. Delightfully winsome and revealing near-perfect comedian timing, Hayward was the right rebellious teenager with a crush on an area farm boy. Hayward’s beautiful, gossamer gentle dancing was virtually eclipsed by her skilful – and really charming – second-act mime as Lise imagines the youngsters she might need. She made Lise’s mortification (photograph above) when her sweetheart Colas revealed that he had ‘overheard’ her simply as plausible and it couldn’t have been bettered in a straight play. I imagine Ashton drew on the reminiscences of Tamara Karsavina – a Lise in pre-revolutionary St Petersburg – for this scene, with it serving as a reminder how his model of the ballet is only one in an extended line that dates again to earlier than the French Revolution.
Ashton created his ballet masterpiece in 1960, imbuing La Fille together with his sometimes ‘English’ signature and tasking Osbert Lancaster to supply the timeless pastoral setting. The story of La Fille is an endearingly easy one: Lise is the daughter of Widow Simone who tries to marry her off to Alain, the one son of a rich landowner, Thomas. Alain is ‘not the sharpest sickle within the barn’ and is painfully shy. Nonetheless, Lise loves the younger and good-looking – although penniless – Colas. As is to be anticipated every little thing is resolved fortunately when having been found collectively in Lise’s bed room – Ashton leaves what they’ve been doing, aside from seemingly altering their costumes, to our creativeness! – they’re allowed to marry, and the celebration of younger love will get the blissful ending we crave for them.
Ashton’s remedy was influenced by not solely Karsavina however the countryside round his Suffolk house. There’s a lot to get pleasure from right here for ballet lovers of all ages: for the very youngest there’s all the time the ‘Aah’ issue of a larger-than-life strutting cockerel (dropped at vivid life by Liam Boswell) together with his 4 hens – apparently influenced by Janáček’s The Crafty Little Vixen – and the small white pony, the debutant Oscar, pulling a cart. Ashton’s deceptively easy choreography incorporates a lot bending, speedy footwork, fast spins, Bournonville softness and pure grace, and Bolshoi-style grand gestures, similar to Colas lifting Lise excessive above his head on the palm of his hand (the well-known ‘bum elevate’) on the finish of their Act I pas de deux. The Royal Ballet’s corps de ballet had been very assured and enthusiastic and all the time in character too. The tough ribbon dances of Act I – we heard from Hayward and her Colas, Marcelino Sambé, that the ribbons have a thoughts of their very own! – had been overcome with consummate ease; together with Lise and Colas’s ‘horse and cart’ and cat’s cradle, in addition to the wheel of ribbons throughout the harvest festivities.
Marcelino Sambé’s efficiency as Colas was pretty much as good as any I’ve seen from him. He dropped at his portrayal a lot of pure boyish attraction and an ideal jack-the-lad confidence. He soared virtuosically – and effortlessly – throughout the stage, spun like a prime and was the right foil to Hayward’s Lise. There was a real chemistry between these two fantastic artists which made their fantastically executed remaining pas de deux the last word summation of their wonderful partnership.
Wayne Sleep will most likely stay the most effective Alain I’ve seen however Joshua Junker, one other new to his position, elicited appreciable sympathy over his quest for a bride and by no means was solely only a determine of enjoyable. Like everybody watching I assume, I revelled in Alain’s pleasure when reunited together with his beloved crimson umbrella and waddled off clutching it to his coronary heart because the ballet ends.
James Hay additionally deserves credit score for his half on this first-rate La Fille. He by no means made Widow Simone a grotesque by overplaying the comedy. Nonetheless, there have been simply sufficient delicate hints of a panto dame for me to recall long-ago Christmas-time reminiscences of Billy Dainty or Roy Hudd. Hay made his Act I clog dance as a lot his personal as is feasible after 65 years. There’s a ‘however’: when Widow Simone chastises her daughter – together with mimed spanking – it may be a little bit jarring to see this now in 2025 and somebody ought to have the braveness to take away these moments.
The smaller roles introduced out the most effective in all involved and I used to be delighted to see all the firm carry out with a pleasure which radiated from the cinema display screen. I need to additionally reward Jonathan Lo and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera Home for such a fascinating, sunny and vigorous account of Hérold’s romantic rating (as organized and added to by John Lanchbery) As I concluded in 2018, if you’re searching for a chilled escape from the disturbing world we now dwell in, you will discover it on this manufacturing. Sadly, in seven years issues are worse not higher!
It was fascinating when The Royal Ballet’s Director – and a former Colas – Kevin O’Hare stated how he wished a heritage ballet similar to La Fille to be ‘for 2025’. This sense of renewal for every technology should finish with me reflecting on how – however a Bonfire Night time kids’s matinee earlier within the day – when the digicam panned across the auditorium the general impression was of an viewers made up of these a lot too near my very own eighth decade.
Jim Pritchard
Featured Picture: James Hay as Widow Simone © Andrej Uspenski
Creatives:
Choreography – Frederick Ashton
Music – Ferdinand Hérold
Organized and Orchestrated by John Lanchbery
State of affairs – Jean Dauberval
Designer – Osbert Lancaster
Lighting designer – John B. Learn
Staging – Christopher Carr
Principal Teaching – Alexander Agadzhanov, Stuart Cassidy, Jean Christophe Lesage, Isabel McMeekan
Forged:
Widow Simone – James Hay
Lise – Francesca Hayward
Colas – Marcelino Sambé
Thomas – Christopher Saunders
Alain – Joshua Junker
Cockerel – Liam Boswell
Hens – Madison Bailey, Bomin Kim, Leticia Inventory, Marianna Tsembenhoi
Lise’s Associates – Mica Bradbury, Annette Buvoli, Leticia Dias, Hannah Grennell, Chisato Katsura, Sae Maeda, Mariko M. Sasaki, Charlotte Tonkinson
Village Notary – Aiden O’Brien
Notary’s Clerk – Liam Boswell
Villagers, Harvesters, Grooms – Artists of The Royal Ballet
