A BLOODY BALLET HORROR STORY
Horror stories are rare in ballet, and “Frankenstein” (2016) is one of the effective ones, in the vein of the old revenge plays ending with homicides and corpses all over the stage. I counted six who die by the final curtain, but I may have missed one or two. The work links posh gentility with lurid assaults.
Thank London’s Royal Ballet for launching this work, adapted from Mary Shelley’s trail-blazing novel of two centuries ago—-very appropriate for marking, if not exactly celebrating, International Women’s Day. The structure of dance sequences is similar to that of the late-19th-century Petipa-Tchaikovsky classics from old Russia—plot interspersed with unrelated ensemble dance sequences running on at very generous length. But it’s a whole lot bloodier than anything in Petipa, accentuated by brilliant blood-red scenic and costume designs of the RB’s John Macfarlane.
Creature, Viktor Frankenstein’s monster, is a simple-minded, spastic, psychopathic killer, a misshapen figure escaped from a lab experiment gone awry. He becomes the nemesis of med-school tinkerer Viktor F. My personal theory is that it’s all Freudian allegory, with Creature the despicable alter-ego of the goodie-goodie “hero” Viktor; when the two fight it out in act three, it’s the conscience battling with the id; the latter wins out. Credit author Shelley and her psycho-insight, writing decades before Freud was even born.
The S.F. Ballet does a very good job with this co-production, bringing into play a huge ensemble and admirable stage craft, though its decision to use no principals here was a mistake. Choreographer is the mercurial Englishman Liam Scarlett, 31, with an ingenious talent for setting new and eye-catching moves on the 13 named soloists. The most extraordinary and virtuosic of these has been Wei Wang as the near-naked Creature in an exhausting set of high-leaping devilish solos, at times bordering on gymnastics. Wavering erratically between timid and terrifying, Wang has more stage presence than all the rest put together.
Also commendable (at least, in the March 9 cast, which resembled that of opening night) was Viktor’s beloved Elizabeth as played by Lauren Strongin, a refined dancer but hardly better an actor than her stone-faced Viktor (Max Cauthorn). Given all the miming required in this period piece, the SFB needed to call up more experienced actors than offered here. Nonetheless this group danced to near perfection, from the 13 in named roles to the various ensembles of maids, prostitutes, valets, lords, ladies, and wedding guests leaping and spinning in unison—readily cast by this troupe with 72 dancers on the roster.
The action requires some suspension of disbelief. Right after his wedding ceremony, why would Viktor leave his bride behind alone, leaving the Creature known to be in the bushes to commit two further brazen murders in his absence?
The original score by Lowell Liebermann is eloquent, punchy and dramatic, emerging stylistically somewhere between late Shostakovich and the two great Prokofieff ballets. The SFB orchestra under Martin West, from the obsessive French horns to the soft percussion, sounded exemplary.
BALLET NOTES—The elaborate vintage med-school machinery for bringing to life the Creature, sparking like a Fourth of July fireworks display, is a show-stopper… The performance runs close to three hours, with two intermissions…Of course the famous closing line of the Creature about Viktor, “He was my father,” had to be omitted. Also gone was the famed confrontation of the Creature and Viktor on the Mer de Glace glacier outside Chamonix, France in the Alps, a chilling scene where author Shelley combined real European sites and times (more or less, the times of Beethoven) with what I hope were fictional characters…Ballet casts are known to vary and rotate from night to night.
SAN FRANCISCO BALLET in Liam Scarlett’s evening-length “Frankenstein.” Through March 11, Opera House, S.F. For ballet info: (415) 861-5600, or go online.
