Birmingham Royal Ballet bring yet another beautiful performance to Birmingham Hippodrome. La Fille Mal Gardée freely adapted and arranged by John Lanchberry, choreography by Frederick Ashton and music by Ferdinand Hérold (performed by Royal Ballet Sinfonia) .
I’ve been to watch The Nutcracker and Swan Lake but one ballet I’ve never seen is La Fille Mal Gardée. So on the run up to this show, I’ve been incredibly excited and equally unsure what to expect. After heading to one of the BRB child shows earlier in the year (BRBs First Steps), they showed a small part from this ballet to the children and it tempted me. It appeared a comical ballet. I was unsure this even existed prior to that, so imagine my delight when I went along this evening to watch the show and came out with a headache from smiling so much.
So what is La Fille Mal Gardée about?
Country girl Lise (Momoko Hirata) falls head over heels in love with Colas (Mathias Dingman) a young farmer. They look the perfect match together and are besotted with one another, but Lise’s mother Widow Simone (Michael O’Hare), thinks her daughter should marry into money and instead wants her daughter to get married to Alain (James Barton) the son of a prosperous vineyard owner, Thomas (Jonathan Payn).
The story follows Lise and Colas falling further and further into love and Widow Simone, Lise’s mother, comically trying (unsuccessfully) to keep Lise and Colas apart and get Lise to marry Alain. How does it end? Well, you’ll need to get tickets and see for yourselves.
It’s not your standard ballet production. What other ballet have you been to where a real life pony is on the stage? And you watch a Cockerel (Kit Holder) and a number of chickens (Rosanna Ely, Beatrice Parma, Rachele Puzzillo and Lynsey Sutherland) leap around the stage showcasing a variety of ballet positions? Ha!
And yet it still has the beautiful aspect of ballet. The phenomenal strength, moves and abilities from the ballet dancers. The choreography in this performance is outstanding and Momoko Hirata and Mathias Dingman were both exceptional in their performances. I fell in love with their love story.
Jean Dauberval (Scenario), Osbert Lancaster (Designs) and Peter Teigan (Lighting) also deserve huge recognition for their roles within this show. The stage was eye catching, transformed quickly between short intervals and one of my favourite sets of a theatre production to date (and I’ve seen a lot).
Robert Gibbs, Paul Murphy and the Royal Ballet Sinfonia performed excellently as usual. The perfect accompaniment to the visual of the ballet.
I came to this Ballet production not knowing much about it. I have left with it being my favourite ballet performance.
For those of you with pre school children between 2-5 years old (or slightly older children if they are home schooled/KS1 at school), Birmingham Royal Ballet are doing another First Steps production on Friday (28th September) a child’s version of the show filled with ballet excerpts from La Fille Mal Gardée. Definitely worth attending, Jemima absolutely loved the first First Steps that we attended (here) and I can’t wait for her to see this one on Friday. With all of the bright colours, high energy on the stage and catchy music Jemima will be in her element. For tickets please click here.
If you like the sound of this Ballet Production and do not already have tickets, please do check out the following link where you can get more information on where the tour is heading and purchase tickets to the show: https://www.brb.org.uk/whats-on/event/la-fille-mal-gardee
Disclaimer: We were invited along to the show in return for an honest review. We thought it was great and if you get chance to book tickets, you won’t regret the choice.
Photographs courtesy of Bill Cooper and Roy Smiljanic.