An ill-conceived, woebegone beast
Frankenstein Royal Ballet, Covent Garden ★★★★★
Remember Wayne Eagling’s 1985 piece for the Royal Ballet, Frankenstein, the Modern
Prometheus? Not many people seem to. But, as distant memory serves, it packed more mystery and melancholy into its 40 minutes than Liam Scarlett’s full-evening Frankenstein manages in almost three hours.
The latter came across as a selfindulgent dud on its 2016 premiere. And, despite the titanic efforts of the cast on Tuesday’s opening night of this, its first revival, it still strikes me as an ill-conceived, woebegone beast that the Royal Ballet management would do well to lay permanently to rest, never mind how many millions it must have cost.
As ever with the Royal’s new story ballets these days, there is no dramaturge listed in the credits. And, wouldn’t you know it, proficient dramaturgy is its chief deficiency: the projection-led preamble sets a promisingly brooding, gothic tone that the remaining two hours 50 minutes completely fail to honour.
Every single episode outstays its welcome and, what’s more, we’re repeatedly asked to care about characters far too quickly. The latter is true of the Frankenstein household in Act I, and also of the Creature’s first substantial scene, in Act II. By this point, we’ve seen him merely dashing from the anatomy theatre, getting his head unconvincingly kicked in, and skulking near-comically among John Macfarlane’s bare, similarly unconvincing trees. There are appealing choreographic ideas here, but disaster strikes (and the Creature “turns”) long before you’ve had a chance to become emotionally invested in its fate.
Act III – the ball for Victor and Elizabeth’s ill-fated wedding – takes place in Geneva, yet next to what looks like a frozen lava field outside Reykjavik. Macfarlane’s minimalist set also leaves the Creature just one place to pounce from. (He’s behind the staircase! Where else can he possibly be?) In other words, nothing about the mechanics of the final, fatal tussles ring true.
Everyone on stage tries immensely hard to keep the ship afloat. Returning as the lead couple of Victor and Elizabeth, Federico Bonelli and Laura Morera (mature though they are to play these teenagers-turnedtwentysomethings) give the pas de deux their all, Wei Wang brings as much menace to the Creature as the steps allow, and Romany Pajdak is uniquely touching as the soon-to-beframed Justine.
Beyond this, it is no pleasure to report the failings of a project into which so many thousands of hours’ work have been poured (up to and including the seamstresses who made Macfarlane’s admittedly beautiful costumes). But when you consider the other full-evening works in the Royal Ballet’s rep – from La Fille mal gardée to Manon to The Winter’s Tale – the heart hardens, and you can’t help wishing that this creation, like Shelley’s creature, would be allowed to drift off into the Arctic wastes, never to be seen again.