“…a hauntingly beautiful adaptation of the classic tale…”
Cast of Snow White (Photo by The Twins)
Snow White retold by Carol Ann Duffy, Leeds Playhouse
By Sean Sable
When I was a kid, the other children watched Disney films and rooted for characters like Ariel and Jasmine. I rooted for Ursula and Maleficent. I wanted to be the witch. To offer up the poisoned apple. And there was a particular quality to older children’s films that intuitively understood this need to explore the darkness. Lighting would shift, shadows would become deeper and you knew that something scary was about to happen. And the films let it. They didn’t shy away from those darker instincts. Over time, much family-friendly programming has lost that edge—that bite—that helps children explore the scary things in life (and live to tell the tale). It has become bland and safe, showing a careless disrespect for the resilience of childhood and the proving ground of make-believe that helps us learn to fight what lurks in the hidden corners. So, when I walked into Leeds Playhouse surrounded by children in their sparkly finest, I prepared myself for a pleasantly predictable, if not slightly bland, experience. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
balletLORENT is a Newcastle-based dance theatre company founded by artistic director Liv Lorent MBE in 1993, and this Snow White is the second instalment in a fairytale trilogy made with former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. It’s a significant reworking of their 2015/16 original, first commissioned by Sadler’s Wells.
Duffy’s retelling abandons the tired stepmother trope and most of what Disney did to the Brothers Grimm. The dwarves are gone, replaced by miners who live below the palace and keep the queen’s world running at considerable cost to themselves. Snow White’s adversary is her mother, a queen so consumed by fear of ageing that she sends a younger portrait of herself to a neighbouring king as a kind of introduction—a fairy catfish, playing neatly into the patriarchal structures that tell her that age is a curse and not a privilege. When the king arrives and assumes the portrait was of Snow White and not her mother, his affections are sealed. No matter how hard Snow White rebuffs his advances, the queen can never compete with the perceived beauty of a younger woman, even when that woman is her daughter. Soon the story begins to move towards darkness with speed and purpose.
I have to admit that narrated ballet is not my usual preference. I like unpicking a story through movement alone and watching how the form shapes the storytelling. But this telling of the classic fairytale has invented enough of its own unique structure that narration genuinely earns its keep, and Carol Ann Duffy’s text is delivered by Sarah Parish with a real storyteller’s cadence that felt fireside-ready. For some of the youngest children in the audience, who would struggle with a programme synopsis, it pulled the story forward in a way that kept them tethered to the action.
Phil Eddolls’ set is a single central structure that rotates to offer three distinct environments. On one side it was a baby-blue Victorian vanity, oversized, with a mirror and drawers that offered a tiered platform the dancers used as much as any flat stage surface. On another side, we see a woodland complete with foliage and jungle nets. In its final form, it transforms into stairs that descend into the miners’ home.
One of the things that truly surprised me was how much this set would be used to create vertical space that extended the choreography. During the miners’ domestic scene, one dancer went up the side of the structure and stayed there, sweeping from twenty feet up, entirely cheerful as my heart pounded. This use of verticality added to the energetic hubbub of many of the scenes. In ensembles, of which there were many, there was so much activity you almost didn’t know where to watch. Settling anywhere would mean missing something and you wanted to get it all. It was delightful clockwork, the kind of dizzying automata that fascinates a child’s (or adult’s!) eyes for hours.
The costuming by Libby El-Alfy and Nasir Mazhar was very texture-forward. The courtiers wear thin, white muslin dresses, the animals of the forest have masks and foliage and the miners wear knitted vests in flesh-tones. At first, this last choice sounded a bit odd until you consider Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting, which shapes space out of near-darkness rather than flooding the stage evenly. In moody light, typical dark boilersuits would have vanished. However, the lighter colour and textured knit kept them visible and gave them an earthy, handmade quality, which sat against the cool grandeur of the queen’s world.
I am a real fan of practical lighting and one of my favourite lighting choices of the evening was the miners’ dance performed almost entirely with the use of their headlamps. The stage fell close to full black, and the miners’ helmet lights became the primary source of rhythm and movement.
Cast of Snow White (Photo by The Twins)
The mirror, played by Berta Admetlla, was the production’s most striking invention, and it made my little inner spooky kid very excited. Silver lamé stretched across the mirror frame and when the mirror spoke (in an unsettlingly modulated voice), dancers pushed against the fabric until we saw faces and hands stretching out of the void. When she left the frame entirely and walked the stage in a full silver suit with a face-obscuring mask, the children around me gasped. They were enthralled. The mirror’s movements lived in a disquieting space: slightly out of time with expected patterns of movement, neither doll nor human, she was alien in the best kind of way.
Whilst all the performances were high calibre, Gavin Coward’s Huntsman was my performance of the evening. There was a quality of vulnerable masculinity to his approach that I found deeply touching. In the forest, when he moves back and forth between intent and mercy, I really connected with his struggle. Later, when he laments over Snow White’s apparent death, his choreography and movement are so emotionally exposed I felt heartbroken. From a technical standpoint, I was also impressed by his ability to carry a completely limp Virginia Scudeletti through beautiful ribbons of movement across the stage. It was a remarkable feat of partner work and trust.
The choreography of the production leaned away from strict ballet and towards dance-theatre. The movement language pulls from contemporary forms with ballet threaded throughout, and although I arrived expecting one thing, I was delighted to find the other. Murray Gold’s score, performed by the Royal Northern Sinfonia, sits alongside rather than beneath the movement, more cinematic in register than orchestral, which suits the production’s overall hybrid quality.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the nine Year 3 pupils from Richmond Hill Academy making their debuts in last night’s production. balletLORENT recruits a new young community cast at each touring venue, and the children were a charming (and sometimes gut-wrenching) presence.
The production ends with Snow White in a stunning white gown, holding a small mirror in a position that is unmistakably selfie-like. The cycle begins again. We are denied our happily ever after. This is exactly the kind of respect for an audience’s capacity for complexity that I walked in hoping to find and had nearly stopped expecting.
My inner spooky kid left satisfied. balletLORENT’s Snow White is a hauntingly beautiful adaptation of the classic tale that understands children deserve to be a little frightened, a little moved, and a little unsettled. Take yourself. Take your kids. But leave the mirror at home.
Cast of Snow White (Photo by The Twins)
Snow White plays at Leeds Playhouse until Saturday 21 February.
Sean Sable is a Yorkshire based freelance writer and editor specialising in Young Adult and Horror fiction, frequently at the same time. When she isn’t buried under a pile of books and manuscripts, she is looking for her keys and having extensive one-sided conversations, in Swedish, with her deaf cat. You can find her online at: www.seansable.co.uk
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