The music outshines the steps in this ancient tale of forbidden love
Layla and Majnun
Mark Morris Dance Group/ Silkroad Ensemble, Sadler’s Wells
Byron apparently described the story of Layla and Majnun as “The Romeo and Juliet of the East”, although given its age – it dates from the 7th century – Pyramus and Thisbe might have been a marginally more accurate comparison. At any rate, this Middle Eastern tale of forbidden and ultimately fatal love has been incredibly influential over the centuries (remember the Derek and the Dominoes classic Layla, to take but one example?), and in 1908 it was turned by composer Uzeyir Hajibeyli into an opera that was also Azerbaijan’s first ever piece of composed music.
The hybrid dance-opera show that (after a 2016 premiere in the US) is at Sadler’s Wells this week for its first UK run is a collaboration between Mark Morris Dance Group, Silkroad Ensemble and the late, great British artist Howard Hodgkin. And, although it inevitably has much to commend it, it’s an oddity none the less.
It begins with 10-15 minutes of balefully beautiful Azerbaijani music to get us in the mood, delivered by an onstage quartet who then cede the stage to the chief musical and terpsichorean players: a dozen of the former, 16 of the latter. Bang in the middle sit two singers, musicians flanking them, dancers in turn taking their positions on the flanks.
This hints at one problem: particularly with Hodgkin’s ravishing, colour-shifting backdrop looming over it, the stage feels almost constantly cramped. There is very little room for the action to breathe, or for the audience to sink fully into the five-act story, a sense compounded by the fact that the choreography is no match for the music.
Those two singers – father and daughter Alim Qasimov (as Majnun) and Fargana Qasimova (Layla)
– are particularly magnificent, their musical trills, quivers and peregrinations as complex as they are spontaneous-sounding, and blazing with passion and emotion. Not so the steps.
Morris has deployed a trick common among choreographers these days, in having several people play the same character at the same time (so that we often get four Laylas and four Majnuns simultaneously) and the same dancers play different characters (such as the couple’s disapproving parents). Allied to Morris’s eye for form, unimpeachable musicality, and a folksy-looking physical palette with arms and wrists often bent at sharp, unwestern angles, this makes for a succession of perfectly pleasing vignettes – plus, of course, there’s the essential contribution of his everdependable troupe. But not once does any of this movement match the magic or intensity of what we’re hearing.
Approached by opera buffs as an opera with a bit of dance thrown in, this new Layla and Majnun show may yield greater rewards. But this dance-lover – perhaps spoilt over the years by Morris’s seldom fluctuating brilliance – can’t help feeling that on this rare occasion, the American master has underplayed his hand.