My curiosity is piqued. How can the greatest wordsmith of English literature retain his compelling complexity and rhythm in a setting without words? I have underestimated the depth of exploration and creativity that the choreographer, the late Liam Scarlett, brings to the themes of the bard, and the ingenious staging and dance skills in this outstanding production. Scarlett takes as his canvas the “ethereal but also sensual” Victorian fairy paintings, and his brush has the same innate and intimate understanding of all the possibilities of ballet as shown by the master, George Balanchine. Original production designer Tracy Grant Lord has conjured a set and sensual costumes that shimmer in an aquatic palette of immersive LED light designed by Kendall Smith, evoking the ethereal 3D world of the movie Avatar. Those fairy paintings were just the starting point!

Tremulous whisps of Mendelssohn’s four, ephemeral overture opening chords whisper magic, resolving into the major, a sure sign of a happy end ahead, as a full-stage starry projection zooms us beyond our known world into an enchanted forest where the sparkling stars of the Royal New Zealand ballet flit, flirt and sweep seamlessly over multiple levels and through giant drupes of purple hybrids of datura and Venus fly trap with creative and staging skills that beggar belief. With the original overture and incidental music insufficient for a full-length ballet, Nigel Gaynor has melded more Mendelssohn into what is now an authentically new “original” score of great intelligence and cohesion. Auckland Philharmonia, under Hamish McKeich, delivers it with verve and richness, making me realise that this ballet dances as much with Mendelssohn as with Shakespeare! The golden syrup of Alex Jeantou’s tuba and the wonderfully united brass, especially the horns under Gabrielle Pho, must be complimented.

The wonder of this work flows not only from the choreography, music and staging, but from the clear delight and collegial respect, almost a gentleness, that shines from the dancers’ interactions, without exception. So, it is appropriate to acknowledge first the corps de ballet dancers working as one in homage to the work’s much-loved conceptualiser; production director Kristen McGarrity has facilitated a fitting, moving two-hour tribute by the entire cast to Liam Scarlett.

Shakespeare’s four Athenian lovers and their friends have morphed into over-eager Victorian jungle explorers, complete with butterfly nets, led by the two couples Hermia (Kate Kadow) and Lysander (Laurynas Vejalis), Helena (Gretchen Steimle) and Demetrius (Zacharie Dun). Their pas de quatre is cute and clever. The mischievous fairies and rustics/mechanicals are danced by the rest of the company. Gretchen Steimle, no stranger to comic roles, deserves special mention for her elastic stage scrambling as the fought-over explorer.

Magic flower dew, a love potion administered by fairy king Oberon’s apprentice imp Puck, creates havoc and while the custody fight over a forest child ensues between king and queen, mistaken identity and misplaced affection frame the story which is really an exotic exploration of the nature of love – and the dangers of relying on appearances!

Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson’s athletic Oberon is majestic, his line beautifully cut and his long arms weaving the air like willow branches in the breeze. He tells the story lyrically and gracefully with especially poised, smoothly spotted and spun fouetté and his effortless elevation of Titania is one example of his absolute assurance. Shaun James Kelly’s Puck is energetic and lithe, acting from the épaulement (shoulders) to his toes, with pacy petit allegro and a palpable sense of mischief – he seems to appear from everywhere and vanish magically, away with the fairies. Peter Pan, eat your heart out! The flowing technique of Ana Gallardo Lobaina as Titania is a joy to behold, her early pas de deux with the king set against lighting that glows red with their anger.

Calum Gray’s donkey steps as the ass-inine Bottom with his arms as hooves and a shimmering flank are comic but also perfectly danced, all the more admirable when his vision is restricted by his “headgear”. His pas de deux with Titania, while funny, also has a sense of tenderness.

The set itself is striking but must impose challenges, with its elevated gantry and sweeping stairway – especially with Titania and Oberon’s flowing costumes – but it works superbly and, for all its complexity and the obstacle it could pose to a finely tuned steeplechase in the woods, it never seems to get in the way, or even creak! Like the dancers themselves, it is silent, honoring the magnificent music.

Like a song in which you can hear every word, this production, without disrupting its fluidity, grace and pace, is a comprehensive exposition of all the skills comprising classical ballet. Previous “Dream” casting experience of the principals, in some cases as other characters, brings additional confidence and depth of interpretation to a faultless production where there is, literally, never a foot put wrong.  By now, my opening question is without doubt answered, which really lies in the stars. The rhythm and fantasy of Shakepeare’s dialogue has somehow been preserved but in a different medium that needs no words. There is genius at work here, and while it began at the end of the 16^th century, it has evolved in our own. Such sensual, cleverly crafted, compelling and magical entertainment.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not only the perfect Christmas confection, it gifts to audiences a deeper appreciation of the sublime artistry and accomplishment of our zesty, extraordinary national ballet company.

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A rapturous response comes from the Manawatu audience as the Royal New Zealand Ballet cast takes their bows after a faultless and enchanting performance of Liam Scarlett’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This is one of those rare ballets where choreography, set, costumes, music and the performers come together in complete harmony, each augmenting the other. The experience is wondrous and uplifting. The dancers look like they are living their roles. As in Shakespeare’s play, love and the various relationship manifestations of love, are explored in the narrative.

Liam Scarlett’s choreography is the work of a ballet genius. Both expansive and intricate, delicate and witty, he allows the dancers to tell Shakespeare’s tale of love through tiny gesture or beautiful full body sweeps. The dance ensemble work is brilliant as are parts such as the madcap chase scenes. Joy is written on the audiences faces. Kristen McGarrity as Production Director, has brought Liam’s work to life.

Not only is Scarlett’s choreography physically beautiful, it pays close attention to Mendelssohn’s music, portraying fine musical details in detailed movements, or luscious expansive movements for those moments in the score. Each of the lovers’ pas de deux are a tour de force. Scarlett does not let theatricality win over technical challenge. The ballet has moments of difficult technique such as fast batterie, sustained poses on demi point and difficult lifts and catches. The company performs these effortlessly, thus creating a fairy world that is believable.

The Tuesday evening cast is wonderful.  Ana Gallardo Lobaina as Titania and Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson as Oberon are regal and their dancing and character portrayal are superb. They are beautifully matched. Their final pas de deux is beautiful and choreographically outshines all the previous pas de deux, as it should, being royalty in the fairy kingdom.

The sharp, comedic, light and beautifully energetic and elevated Shaun James Kelly, is a superb Puck. Kate Kadow and Laurynas Vėjalis as the lovers Hermia and Lysander, are beautifully matched and the partnering work in their romantic Act One pas de deux, is confident and delightful. The confused lovers Kirby Selchow (Helena), and Luke Cooper (Demetrius), are sharp and witty. In Act Two the hilarious comedic antics of the four are wonderfully performed with excellent timing.  Calum Gray is a delightful Rustic, a somewhat lost soul, who becomes the equally confused Bottom. He expresses all the nuances the choreography allows between the donkey and the human characters, giving it subtlety and a sometimes raunchy, earthiness.  As Bottom he is adorable and has the audience in his hands/hooves, and tail.

All the fairies are gorgeous and perform vivaciously and beautifully. The Rustics, who look like boy scouts, rip into all the humour and physicality that the choreography provides. It is a wonderful moment when a large group of them emerge from one tent.

The costumes (Tracy Grant Lord) are fashioned beautifully to allow beautiful flow and movement. Oberon’s long jacket in Act one flies beautifully with his turns and leg extensions and augments his grace, as does Titania’s delicate body sculpted soft dress. The set (Tracy Grant Lord) is exquisite and with the lighting, (Kendall Smith) allows the dancers to appear from all places and heights within their fairy dell. Puck is able to flit everywhere, to “put a girdle around the world in 40 minutes”.

The Palmerston North performance uses the recorded version of the music arranged for the ballet by Nigel Gaynor and recorded by the New Zealand Symphany Orchestra for the premiere season of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2015. As the theatres sound system is excellent, the arrangement is also excellent to the ear.

It is wonderful to see this ballet, originally commissioned by the Royal New Zealand ballet and its then Artistic Director, Ethan Stiefel in 2015, come to life again. A fitting tribute to Liam Scarlett who tragically died in aged thirty-five in 2021, but as a choreographer was full of life, wit and genius. The programme for the 2024 season is well prepared and has some lovely passages from the designer and some dancers about working with Liam on the 2015 production.

There is something in this ballet for everyone. A good story, a lot of drama and superb, intricate dance. Thank you to the Royal New Zealand Ballet for this delightful year end tour. Palmerston North looks forward to seeing you in 2025.

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The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s production of Liam Scarlett’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, now touring nationally for the first time since its initial season in 2015, is nothing less than pure theatrical magic from the first moment when Mendelssohn’s delicious score opens proceedings until the music dies away and the light fades on the reconciled fairy lovers, Titania and Oberon. Scheduled for a revival in 2020, that tour was subverted by Covid 19, making the current season particularly welcome.  For anyone who saw the original production and who might fear that it would be impossible to recreate the special magic conjured up by the original casts, such concerns are completely groundless, since although last night’s cast included none of the dancers who originally created their parts, the vital spirit of those first performances is totally present. This is a remarkable recreation of a very special ballet in all its shimmering beauty.

The genius of Shakespeare’s original play is that it allows the experience of love to be viewed from multiple angles within the framework of a witty and complex plot.  Scarlett’s genius is to have distilled the essence of the play and to have explored the multi-faceted nature of love through a succession of pas de deux and, inevitably, a pas de trois. From the opening we see the jealous love of Oberon and Titania as they vie for possession of the Changeling child, performed with warmth and spark by the commanding Oberon of Zacharie Dun and the sweetly determined Katherine Minor as Titania.  This is followed by the pas de deux for the established lovers, Kirby Selchow’s sincere Hermia and Calum Gray’s devoted Lysander, the first of the two couples lost in the enchanted wood.  The contrast with the indifferent Demetrius, smitten with the already commited Hermia, and the literally myopic Helena, who remains blind to the the lack of interest shown by the object of her devotion, could not be more telling.  Joshua Guillemont-Rodgerson and Ana Gallardo Lobaina strike sparks off one another, Lobaina in particular showing notable comedic flair as she is flung across the stage in a series of undignified rebuffs. 

Then there is the bluff, below the surface, love of the Rustics, bound together in youthful cammaraderie.  Love’s absurdity is explored in the witty yet painful display of affection between the exquisitly beautiful Titania and and the grotesque Bottom, with his ass’s head and hoofs for hands.  Jake Gisby is a marvel as Bottom, relishing every opportunity to embrace the object of his love and imbuing his pas de deux with Titania with real passion, in spite of the inevitable constraints of a challenging costume.  He is also fully in touch with Bottom’s more earthy side and full of wonder at the transformations he undergoes at the hands of Oberon.  There is also the opportunistic love of Puck, whose too liberal dispensing of magic juices sets the human lovers at odds with one another.  Puck is happy to find his kisses where he can among the fairy cohort that flit and glide through the magic wood. 

Before Oberon commands Puck to restore order the human lovers display love’s discords as as both Lysander and Demitrius assail the distraught Helena with their unwelcome rivalry.  This leads to a mad dash through the wood as fairies, lovers and Rustics join in a seemingly chaotic, but brilliantly timed, chase.  With order reestablished we witness love reconciled, as Oberon and Titania join in the heartfelt final duet that brings the ballet to a close.

All this action takes place within Tacey Grant Lord’s brilliantly evocative set of sloping ramps, hidden stairs, lofty eries and hidden bowers.  Lord’s costumes of shimmering colours and fantastic forms for the fairies contrast with the more earthy tones of the Rustics and the simpler camping attire of the human lovers, enhancing the sense of two cohorts of beings invisible to one another yet simultaneously inhabiting the stage. The magical atmosphere is enhanced by Kendall Smith’s lighting design which achieves the delicate balance necessary to evoke the nocturnal world while still providing sufficient illumination to make the action fully visible.

There is, quite simply, no weak link in this production; every component comes together in a superbly unified whole, supported by the Christchurch Symphony in top form, conducted by Hamish Mckeich, ever attentive to the needs of the dancers and the action on stage.  One has the sense that everyone involved has given of their very best to honour the creative brilliance of the late Liam Scarlett, whose memorial this production most certainly is.  The programme includes moving tributes to Scarlett by three of the original cast, Lucy Green, Tonia Looker and Bronte Kelly, and there was the added poignancy of attending this A Midsummer Night’s Dream on All Hallows Eve, the night before the feast day that honours the dead. There was also a particular appropriatenes of it taking place in Christchurch’s Theatre Royal, where the bard’s image looks down on the audience and his immortal characters frolic on the painted dome overhead.

This production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a taonga of the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s repertoire and we have had to wait too long for its revival.  It is one of those productions that deserves to be brought back to the stage on a regular basis, a signature work that the company now has the responsibility of preserving as it is handed on from one generation of dancers to the next. As long as this production lives, so long will the memory of Liam Scarlett endure.

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As the year comes ever nearer to a close, the Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) has one more trick up their sleeve in an exciting 2024 season of ballet and neoclassical works. A Midsummer Night’s Dream might not be the first Shakespearean piece to come to mind, but it is definitely a bundle of fun. First staged by George Balanchine in 1972, it has been readapted by the late Liam Scarlett and accompanied by breathtaking set and costume design by Tracy Grant Lord. The RNZB last performed this piece in 2021 during the beginnings of COVID-19 for a limited audience in the Opera House, Wellington, but the vibrant audience on opening night was a long way from the scattering of viewers back then.

Before the dancing even begins the audience is met with an exciting array of lighting tricks as we are introduced to the changeling and fairies, lit up in different areas of the ornately crafted set. Once fully lit, the stage becomes a home for the graceful and perfectly musical fairies in their tattered green and blue tutus, making way for Titania and Oberon, Ana Gallardo Lobaina and Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson respectively, who strut like royalty towards the unsuspecting changeling.  A fight over the changeling ensues leaving Titania the lucky victor and Oberon in need of a cunning plan.

Cunning could not be better personified than by Puck who, upon awakening, nimbly traverses the stage with Oberon to scheme. Shaun James Kelly perfectly fits the role of Puck and he, along with Guillemot-Rodgerson, with their less conventional male partnering, set the stage for a strong yet quirky relationship. The rest of the cast soon emerges, Hermia, Mayu Tanigaito and Lysander, Kihiro Kusukami taking the spotlight with their effortless partnering while Helena, Kirby Selchow and Demetrius, Zacharie Dun made us laugh with their wild humour. The audience is further enthralled by the heavily folk dance-inspired Rustics. Bottom, Calum Gray, a particular stand-out as the fool of the group, subtly foreshadowing the donkey he would soon become. Oberon and Puck watch omnisciently from the bridge above as their plan comes to fruition, guffawing at the site of Bottom’s hip thrusts and Titania’s innuendos, all added to by the motif of the playful tuba from the orchestra. Guillemot-Rodgerson takes the spotlight with his acting, his facial expressions reading from all areas of the theatre as the audience joins in his humour. However, it is not all smooth sailing for the schemers, as Puck’s carelessness with the four lovers paves the way for a tricky second act.

As the curtains rise and the mist on stage subsides, James Kelly readies us for his onslaught of tricks as he swings down from above in mischievous fashion. Setting his new plan in motion he expertly mimes lassoing the lovers, bringing them bourree by bourree, closer together. It was at this point that Titania is released from her spell and, absolutely disgusted with her unconscious love, admits defeat to Oberon. The wedding march sounds and we are witness to expert choreographic work as each lover makes it up to the other, some excelling through witty acting and others through awe-inspiring partnering. The matchmaking is admirable and for a piece so focused on chemistry each dancer reproduces it with such authenticity and skill.

Upon reflection, a superficially simple story conveyed a lot more meaning than it appeared – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It highlights that love never does run smoothly and perhaps that love really is just a dream. We as an audience would not be able to enjoy a story like this with such amusement without the interpretative efforts and artistry of the people behind this artform. It was inspiring to see a full house of happy people, knowing how the arts have suffered in the past. The arts are not what sustain life but they are what we live for, and the RNZB have once again given many of us exactly that.

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Fairies, lovers, rustics. Two co-existing realms – a bumbling oblivious party of hiker-campers and a mystical fairy grotto. Forces beyond control, manipulating and creating mayhem. Conflict and resolution. It’s all here in this opulent and skilful rendering of Shakespeare’s beloved masterpiece.
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A welcome return of one of the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s most wonderful productions. This is storytelling at its best and a lot of fun as well! The dancers all relish their roles and take us on a journey that twists earthly romance and meddlesome faerie people and their encounters in a magical forest glade. The opening night Wellington audience loved it. 

The curtain goes up and the set transports us with clever use of levels and spectacular lighting by Kendall Smith. Design and costumes by Tracy Grant Lord are outstanding and shimmer amongst the trees and vines. The story is kept true to its Shakespearean inspiration  and this meeting of mortals and the magical is well known but still surprises.

 Characters are well drawn with Oberon and Puck in control. The dancing is crisp and clear with technical challenges danced as if by magic – this is what classical ballet is all about and the company rise to the challenge in every way. There are many leads and they each excel – engineered by a  mercurial Puck ( Shaun James Kelly) and his autocratic master  Oberon (Joshua Guillemot- Rodgerson), an  exquisite Titania (Ana Gallardo Lobaina) rules as  Queen of a bevy of beautiful fairies.

The mortals out wandering the woods are a cleverly nuanced Hermia danced by Mayu Tanigaito and her suave Lysander( Kihiro Kusukami), persecuted Helena (Katy Selchow)  and her infatuated Demetrius (Zacharie Dun) and a great bunch of kiwi farmers named here  as the Rustics of Shakespeare’s original play.

The four caricatured lovers feel a little cliched and, seen in the world of today, use gestures at times that border on the  inappropriate? Nevertheless the tangle of their attractions is solved and has many entertaining sequences. The ballet romps  through the many misunderstandings engineered by Oberon and his apprentice Puck and stays true to the original  story as it resolves romances, unites partnerships and solves Titania’s infatuation with an ass.  Fairies flutter and frolic as  they dart in and out of the trees and the rambunctious rustics bring high spirited rhythm to their corps de ballet  ‘country style’ . Calum Gray as Bottom is gloriously  gangly.  

All this said, it is the choreography that is the star of this Midsummers Night’s Dream. Liam Scarlett’s talent is manifest in his creativity. His untimely death cut short a real talent and promising choreographic career. 

  Orchestra Wellington under the compelling baton of Hamish McKeich,  is a key part of the sucess of the night, playing Felix  Mendelssohn’s beautiful ballet score.  Scarlett uses the music in every move he choreographs with a real understanding  of dynamic and motif – his ballet dances the music! The steps fit the characters, the partnering shares phrases and echoes the emotional journey each dancer is taking. Puck is everywhere and his footwork is as mischievous as his muddling! 

The final pas de deux by Titania and Oberon soars with ethereal extensions and such command and positivity that we  leave the theatre smiling and feeling that all’s good with our world also. 

Wonderful theatre. Wonderful dancing. Thank you. Bravo to Director Tai King Wall and the entire team at our Royal New Zealand Ballet.

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