Liam Scarlett’s debut, full-length ballet, “Frankenstein,” a co-production with San Francisco Ballet for The Royal Ballet, proved to be as much a masterpiece as Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel of the same name (1818), which inspired it. World premiered at the Royal Opera House last week, this first ever dance adaptation of the gothic tale is not-to-be missed.Royal Opera House’s theatre attendants don blood stained aprons, the front cloth depicts an anatomical skull; some young audience members arrive right in the spirit, in ghoulish make-up and gothic-style dresses, and the show begins. From Frankenstein’s Geneva manor house to the cemetery, the anatomy theatre, and the tavern at Ingolstadt University, and back again to the manor, designer John Macfarlane created some marvelous and sophisticated sets and costumes that capture the era - one that is incredibly relevant to the story: “[…] everything being on the verge of discovery, morality, and religion being challenged by science,” explains Scarlett in the program notes.With great virtuosity and choreographic diligence, Scarlett crafted carefully each one character of the story, especially the three main one’s taken on by principal dancers. Frankenstein’s ideas of the new scientific world and galvanism, his visions, memory recollections and dreams are animated vigorously by Federico Bonelli; his feelings, however beheld in his expressionless countenance, are exposed through his vivid body language. Laura Morera is cast beautifully and with extreme grace as Victor’s wife, Elizabeth Lavenza, expressing too much tender love during her refined pas de deux with Bonelli, whilst he remains stringent and solid.The monomaniac, mad scientist Victor Frankenstein performs a series of scientific operations at the anatomy theatre, until he invents his Creature from stitched together dead matter during a visually stunning moment: phantasmagoric pyrotechnics shoot out of a mechanical apparatus, landing from above the stage. Horrified by his appearance, Victor abandons him.Steve McRae gives a strenuous interpretation of the ambiguous Creature, at once vicious, gruesome and childlike, yet vulnerable and sensitive. He slides and undulates like an animal, poses like a feared human, then leaps and dances in imitation of the people he observes, as he constructs his identity over the course of the ballet. Due to Victor’s neglect, the Creature is self-taught and grows monstrous, his vengeance manifest in a series of murders. These unravel poetically, “as a domestic drama, as opposed to horror,” explains Lowell Liebermann, whose melodic score, conducted by Koen Kessels, creates an atmosphere with great sense of suspense.The execution of Justine, who has been accused for the murder of Victor’s younger brother, William, is a moment far too hair-raising to forget: her body spasms with convulsive movements, as she is being suspended by the neck. For the final scene, Victor and the Creature dance an intimate duet filled with love, hate and despair until Victor shoots himself; the Creature then walks away and is lost in the flaming landscape.Scarlett’s “Frankenstein” may reflect the horror of the story at certain moments, but it gives emphasis to the characters’ emotions, to the notion of empathy, love and betrayal, and principles of life and death. Literary critic Marilyn Butler remarked in an 1993 article (in the Times Literary Supplement) that, “Frankenstein is famously reinterpretable.” Focusing on the Creature itself, Scarlett’s take is on a contemporary moral of the story, referencing the abandonment felt by those who seem to be outside of society, whose stigmatization defines not so much the outsider as it does the insiders who conspire against them.Liam Scarlett’s “Frankenstein” at the Royal Opera House, London, UK untilMay 27, 2016 and screened live in cinemas on May 18, 2016
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