, the movement is, for the most part, a laboured ballet-by-numbers. So literal is much of the choreography that it often threatens to descend into a cartoonish pastiche of the mime of Marcel Marceau. In other moments – such as when the amdram crew run around in a foundering attempt at comedy – the movement seems indebted to Benny Hill. Astoundingly poor artistic de){kind=link}
Based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ballet Cymru’s show suffers from cartoonish and dreadfully misconceived choreography
Ballet Cymru was pleased to receive significant critical recognition recently when it was nominated for the Best Mid-Scale Dance Company gong in the British Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards. All seemed set fair, therefore, for Dream, the company’s new piece based on Shakespeare’s much-loved comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Sad to report, however, that the show has barely begun before one is wishing ardently that it were a dream from which one could wake up immediately. A ballet on a shoestring – it has no physical set save for three differently-sized boxes – the piece comes horribly short in almost every department.
In this telling of human and fairy frailty, Peter Quince and his band of amateur thespians appear in modern dress, including hi-vis jackets and hard hats. They look like an unfortunate collision between American 1970s disco sensation Village People and a group of workers carrying out maintenance on the A483 outside Wrexham.
These costumes clash horribly with the mainly tacky, supposedly ethereal designs for the denizens of the fairy world. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the ballet is played on a bare stage supplemented by a series of hazily projected backdrops that represent, not only the Bard’s famous forest, but also, daftly, a Glastonbury-style field of tents.