Review: PIERROT LUNAIRE, Royal Ballet And Opera - Linbury Theatre

It can be easy to take brilliant dancers for granted. They move with such ease and naturalism it's as if no hardship is involved. Marcelino Sambé is the perfect case in point. A performer so physically expressive and emotionally inquisitive, one can easily forget what he's actually doing in order to take himself, and consequently his audience to levels of artistic exploration. Let's all aim to really consider this in the moment.

Sambé currently stars in the revival of Glen Tetley’s Pierrot Lunaire at the Royal Ballet and Opera's Linbury Theatre and is supported by a very strong cast of Mayara Magri and Matthew Ball. And an even stronger presence in the soprano Alexandra Lowe. 

The work is set to Arnold Schoenberg's difficult (in my opinion) score, yet on the commute home I found myself trying to imitate Lowe's compelling approach to Sprechstimme (spoken song melodrama). Schoenberg's work is described as atonal, Lowe brought passion and intrigue to it, and something that carried beyond the four walls.

Pierrot Lunaire is regarded as an important work in the dance canon, and one can appreciate this in relation to its 1962 premiere. However 64 years later it didn't ball me over. I don't believe I was transported once throughout the piece - I had many moments of appreciation for the individual artists - but the sum of things didn't actually move me.

This could be due to the combination of the Schoenberg and the predictability of the commedia dell'arte characters. I'm sure this will be sacrilegious for some, but you just know exactly what you're going to get, and that doesn't necessarily stimulate my intrigue. I don't feel I learnt anything new about humanity, so then one starts to wonder what are we actually doing here.

The movement is dense and characterised but doesn't often find musical phrasing due to the score. That said one can locate pockets of pleasure - specifically in Magri's unapologetic Columbine, Ball's caricature Brighella and Sambé's naive Pierrot.

I love a period piece, and was ready to be wowed by Pierrot Lunaire but it didn't happen. I wasn't moved by the work. The scaffolding set by Rouben Ter-Arutunian is the stuff of legends, yet I was surprised how little time was spent on it and how its slight looseness translated into motion sickness for me. This first viewing of the renowned Tetley work isn't calling me back for more, no matter how good some aspects of the performance may have been.

Pierrot Lunaire shows at the Royal Ballet and Opera, Linbury Theatre until 20 February