Absent plot and character, much of the ballet looks generic and recycled. Over here we have the ragpickers and ragamuffins led by that lovable rapscallion Beggar Chief, all looking for the next treat — or trick. Over there it’s MacMillan’s ubiquitous International League of Frizzy-Haired Whores, though there’s hardly a woman in the production who doesn’t hitch up her skirt to show she’s for sale. In the middle, two ladies who’ve already fallen out over a john try to one-up each other à la the Cinderella stepsisters. Everywhere we have folks breaking into Broadway-chorus-like high jinks, as if they were on display in the Manon theme park, or preparing for Manon: The Musical. Anchored in MacMillan’s Baroque inversions and Kama Sutra lifts, the two bedroom scenes for Manon and Des Grieux mirror those in Romeo, one before the first crisis (Romeo’s banishment, Des Grieux’s exposure), one after.
The score, assembled by Leighton Lucas and Hilda Gaunt (and at the Wang played for all it’s worth by a local orchestra under Martin Yates), opens on a few bars of Berlioz-like religioso chords before moving on to what sounds uncannily like H.M.S. Pinafore’s “Buttercup,” and from there it’s a kitchen sink. There are adumbrations of Bernard Herrmann in the courtyard pas de deux between Manon and Des Grieux; the first bedroom scene climaxes with schmaltz that would make Sigmund Romberg blush. The Nocturne from Massenet’s La Navarraise anticipates the Arabian-flavored “Coffee” from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker as it grounds a long, slow, hypnotic saraband, Manon being passed from one man to the next while you wonder whether they’re just admirers or whether G.M. is now pimping her out. And there’s Bette Davis five-hanky music (Dark Victory? Now, Voyager?) for the big finish as Manon and Des Grieux hallucinate amid the mist and the Spanish moss.
NO SEX, PLEASE, JUST YOUR LEG: Christopher Saunders checks out Alina Cojocaru. |
Speaking to the New Yorker in 1974, MacMillan boasted, “You have a sixteen-year-old heroine who is beautiful and absolutely amoral, and a hero who is corrupted by her and becomes a cheat, a liar, and a murderer. Not exactly our conventional ballet plot, is it?” With a heroine who doesn’t get to dance out her conflicts and two cardboard villains, G.M. and the New Orleans rapist Gaoler, who don’t get to dance at all (even Scarpia has “Ha piú forte sapore”), Manon is indeed unconventional, its art prostituted to MacMillan’s politics.Fortunately, not everyone in the three casts that danced last weekend was conversant with the Gospel According to Ken. In her French-schoolgirl hat, the opening-night Manon, Tamara Rojo, was anything but amoral, and she confirmed the Audrey Hepburn affect of the Odette/Odile she danced when the Royal brought Swan Lake to Boston in 2001: regal, independent, and chiseled, with big eyes, big arches, and milkweed-light six o’clock penchées. Every move was centered and weighted as well as articulated and phrased, giving off the earthy, heady promise of sex.
