Frankenstein meets billionaire space race? If only it added up
Creature by Akram Khan ENB, Sadler’s Wells, London EC1
Creature, Akram Khan’s new work for English National Ballet, is a cast-iron disappointment. This is particularly sad given its cruelly long, lockdown-enforced gestation (it was supposed to premiere on April 1 last year); Khan’s blistering track record with ENB (his short Dust, his full-length Giselle) and without them (from Zero Degrees to Desh to Xenos); and the effort that has clearly been poured into it.
Two hours long, with an interval, it was inspired chiefly by Georg Büchner’s mid-19th-century play Woyzeck (with a dash of Frankenstein). It centres on a lone person – the titular Creature – being experimented on in a remote military Arctic research station, with the help of new suits and helmets: the idea is that if this human guinea pig can survive the cold and isolation here, then others will be able to evacuate the increasingly toxic earth and resettle elsewhere.
Herein lie all sorts of noble intentions: a desire to mock the billionaires’ space race, to dramatise loneliness, state oppression, and climate change. And Khan’s ambition is not merely intellectual: unlike Dust and Giselle, whose steps were roughly one part Kathak/contemporary (ie Khan’s “language”) to four parts classical (ENB’S), here, he boldly turns that on its head. This, then, is bracingly modern dance with the odd classical flourish, and there are some moments of real choreographic inspiration. The belligerent goose-steps Khan gives to the oppressive corps; a late exit from the Major (the project’s domineering overseer) with a kind of seething, flesh-and-blood train of bodies attached to him; one particularly charming lift involving, of all things, a common-or-garden mop. And my, do ENB’S dancers put their backs into it.
The fundamental problem is the storytelling. Even with the synopsis on my lap, I had little idea what was happening beyond the barest bones of the action. In terms of narrative, far less would have been far more.
Nor does the actual production help. Michael Hulls is a magician of lighting design, but he is a creator of textures rather than a facilitator of plots, and there is a curiously static quality to most of his work here. As for Oscar-winner Tim Yip’s set, this – a kind of huge log cabin – promises much, but the effect is tedium rather than claustrophobia, and the coup de théâtre never quite comes. It just sits there obdurately, mostly unchanged, for the show’s duration – the thunderous soundscapes by Vincenzo Lamagna are relied on too much to propel the action forward.
Also, did the show really need a rape scene? Knowing the sensitively minded Khan, this will not have been included lightly, and I suspect it is not only a final cementing of the Major’s vileness, but also a symbolic abuse of the Earth, of all that’s good. In such a woolly plot, though, it feels above all like yet another unnecessary violation of a female character (here, Creature’s inamorata Marie, lyrically played by Erina Takahashi) on a London dance stage.
For the dancers, though, I have only praise. This is particularly true of ENB principal Jeffrey Cirio, a lightning-bolt of a performer who can switch between elemental apoplexy and absolute tenderness in a nanosecond, and move with such precision and sheer speed that he’s like a walking special effect.
In fact, he is the perfect exponent of Khan’s movement quality – so much so that I’d urge Khan, who, at 47, has already stopped creating new shows for himself, to whip up one for Cirio. In the meantime, my advice to dance fans is to wait for Sadler’s November revival of Khan’s drop-dead-perfect Xenos.
That, I promise, will blow your mind.
Until Oct 2. Tickets: 020 7863 8000; sadlerswells.com