Royal Claptrap, Star Turns and Subtle Poetry

COSTA MESA â€”  The ever-optimistic management at the Orange County Performing Arts Center heralded the Royal Ballet agenda on Thursday as “A Gala Programme.â€� The tone, like the spelling, suggested something very grand and veddy British.

Actually, the event resembled nothing so much as a royal grab-bag--sometimes distressing, sometimes risible, sometimes silly, sometimes touching and, thank goodness, sometimes illuminating. Stylistic consistency obviously was not the issue here.

The worst came first. It came, alas, in “The Judas Tree,� which represents Kenneth MacMillan’s valedictory. The late choreographer’s final hour with the Royal Ballet was not his finest.

In this contrived and convoluted exercise in contemporary obfuscation, MacMillan tried desperately to be trendy. Also bleak and deep.

He turned to Brian Ellis for a timidly discordant score that wallows in ancient-modernist cliches. He turned to Jock McFadyen for a quaint London-junkyard set, complete with discarded cars, looming skyscraper and convenient scaffolding (the better to hang you by, my dear).

Within this urban-life-is-hell milieu MacMillan offered some blights of his own. He toyed with a mystical mumbo-jumbo narrative that fused Grand Guignol melodrama with Biblical symbolism. He gave his dancers a movement vocabulary that clumsily juxtaposed rough-and-tumble theatrics with snatches of ballet-is-beautiful artifice.

The subject, we think, is betrayal. The Judas of this tortuous tale--identified in the, er, programme, as The Foreman--hangs out with 13 pretty-boy hoods (remember the Sharks and Jets?). They dabble in competitive beefcake display, rumble on command, eye each other all too knowingly, model yellow rain-slickers in moments of turmoil, and pay homage to the old bromide (Ogden Nash, I think) that claims seduction is for sissies but a he-man likes his rape.

The rape victim turns out to be The Woman--ah, those fraught-with-meaning names. She happens to wear a tight little bathing suit, and she spends a lot of time tugging at its crotch. She also wraps herself in a saintly sheet when the spirit dictates. The London press tells us that she represents a combination of Madonna (not the declining superstar) and Magdalene.

Before the soggy saga reaches its merciful end (not a second too soon), a Jesus-esque figure turns up for a kiss-the-other-cheek ritual, two murders are committed, another ballerina is rushed into the wings under a sheet (we see only her toe shoes), and, oh yes, the Foreman makes gimmicky but fatal use of the noose prop.

It all must mean something. Frankly, my dear, MacMillan doesn’t let us give a darn. Claptrap.

The performance looked good, but it hardly mattered. This exercise wasn’t about dancing.

As the titular whatever, the vaunted Irek Mukhamedov crouched, contorted, crawled, cowered, sprawled, leapt and popped his eyes with distorted yet disciplined Bolshoi bravado, despite an onstage accident that left him a bloodied finger. Viviana Durante suffered the cruel indignities of the eternally feminine victim with fragile prettiness. William Trevitt seemed competent as the Foreman’s Christ-like friend. (We think it was Trevitt; in this case, it was hard to tell the players even with a program.) Barry Woodsworth did what he could in the clangy orchestra pit.

Luckily, it was all uphill from here. Everything, of course, is relative.

The middle portion of the show focused on three contrasting duets.

Zoltan Solymosi, flamboyant if a bit primitive, partnered Darcey Bussell, radiant if a bit robust, in a fuzzy approximation of Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.� Oddly and regrettably, this five-minute exercise turned out to be Bussell’s only assignment in Orange County.

Viviana Durante, now properly ethereal, came back to terra firma in Frederick Ashton’s “Thais Pas de Deux,� gallantly partnered by a seemingly narcissistic Stuart Cassidy. The perfumed exotica was bemusing. The bejeweled, blushing-pink hootchy-kooch costumes by Anthony Dowell (who had danced the premiere in 1971 opposite the exquisite Antoinette Sibley) could not be described as refined. Still, one had to applaud the subtlety of the choreography--all legato sighs and gestural whispers--as well as the lyric finesse of the performance.

Next came the local premiere of the “Herman Schmerman� pas de deux, a whimsically with-it essay by that all-American bad-boy, William Forsythe. The daring, long-legged Sylvie Guillem did her cool funky-punky thing, unblushingly sporting a Versace costume that left little to the imagination regarding her anatomy above the waist. Under the circumstances, Adam Cooper, her able partner, had to work doubly hard to sustain attention, even when he suddenly appeared in a tiny yellow skirt that matched hers.

It was all good, clean, shrug-and-shuffle fun. Forsythe knows how to cope with the Tharper image.

Guillem returned after intermission as Natalia Petrovna, the bored and frustrated introvert who dominates Ashton’s masterpiece, “A Month in the Country.� The French guest-artist is a flashy, athletic ballerina blessed with legs that go on forever and can kick the stars out of the sky with ease.

Nature would not seem to have intended her for the poetic understatement of Turgenev’s Russian heroine as filtered through British sensibilities. This, after all, was a role created in 1976 for Lynn Seymour. The inherent ecstasies and agonies have been defined by such dissimilar interpreters as Antoinette Sibley, Natalia Makarova, Altynai Assylmuratova and Genesia Rosato.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that Guillem made the most of Natalia’s muted passions, or that she made the light and shade of Ashton’s bittersweet sentiment palpable. Still, she moved with undeniably magnetic force, exuded instant glamour, made a commendable effort to suppress her bravura instincts and exerted stoic eloquence in the ultimate moment of denial. If she compelled more admiration than tears, one still had to be grateful for her intelligence and her restraint.

She was ably if blandly partnered by Bruce Sansom as young Beliaev (not much chemistry here), and sympathetically supported by such vaunted Royal Ballet veterans as David Drew (Yslaev) and Derek Rencher (Rakitin). Anthony Bourne did nicely with the sprightly juvenilia of Natalia’s kite-flying kid. Sarah Wildor was pertliness personified as Natalia’s ward and Gail Taphouse tippy-toed knowingly through the piquant duties of Natalia’s maid.

Phillip Gammon attended eloquently to the moonstruck piano music of Chopin recycled in the pit. Anthony Twiner conducted the responsive Pacific Symphony con amore. Julia Trevelyan Oman’s decors retained their Mozartean elegance.

A civilized ballet, sensitively performed. At last.

* The Royal Ballet concludes its engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, with a different program today at 3 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30. $20 to $70 at the box office, (714) 556-ARTS, ext. 240.