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Birmingham Royal Ballet: La Fille mal gardée in Birmingham, Plymouth, London, September-October 2024


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The much awaited revival of Frederick Ashton's glorious La Fille mal gardée (6 years since the last London or Birmingham performances of the complete ballet) starts tonight at last! Opening tonight at Birmingham Hippodrome with performances until Saturday night, it goes to Theatre Royal Plymouth next,  then Sadler's Wells Theatre, London (with the premiere and performances of Luna in between as well). Running time is announced as 2 hours 20 minutes with 2 intervals. 

 

Advance casting info, booking info and downloadable cast lists for each  performance available at: 

https://www.brb.org.uk/shows/la-fille-mal-gardee#credits  (click on each PDF next to the show date to get the cast list for that performance). John Lanchbery's arrangement of Ferdinand Harold's music will be performed by Royal Ballet Sinfonia. 

 

Also wishing big chookas and best wishes to the company at the box office.

🍀 🍀 🍀 🍀 🍀 🍀 🍀 🍀 

Edited by Emeralds
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3 hours ago, Emeralds said:

The much awaited revival of Frederick Ashton's glorious La Fille mal gardée (6 years since the last London or Birmingham performances of the complete ballet) starts tonight at last! Opening tonight at Birmingham Hippodrome with performances until Saturday night, it goes to Theatre Royal Plymouth next,  then Sadler's Wells Theatre, London (with the premiere and performances of Luna in between as well). Running time is announced as 2 hours 20 minutes with 2 intervals. 

 

Advance casting info, booking info and downloadable cast lists for each  performance available at: 

https://www.brb.org.uk/shows/la-fille-mal-gardee#credits  (click on each PDF next to the show date to get the cast list for that performance). John Lanchbery's arrangement of Ferdinand Harold's music will be performed by Royal Ballet Sinfonia. 

 

Also wishing big chookas and best wishes to the company at the box office.

🍀 🍀 🍀 🍀 🍀 🍀 🍀 🍀 

 

I'll be going to Sadlers Wells in October and taking some friends from work for their first taste of ballet !

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10 hours ago, San Perregrino said:

Opening night was delightful. Beatrice Parma exquisite as Lise. Enrique Bejarano Vidal effervescent as Colas. The audience loved it. 

Fab! How was the new "guest artist"🐴 -  the successor of your namesake?  🙂

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I agree that Beatrice was very good, she captured the essence of Lise, feisty and loving, and coped admirably with the deceptively difficult choreography. At the matinee this afternoon Sofia Linares was charming and Lachlan Monaghan caught the essence of Colas and danced well, as did Enrique Bejarano Vidal last night. At each performance Rory Mackay gave a masterclass in  characterisation as Widow Simone as well as bringing out the comedy. As Alain at both performances  Gus Payne was comic without quite exceeding the boundaries, apparently Christopher Carr was strict in demanding that all aspects of the performance should adhere to Ashton's original intentions. 

All the dancers performed well and the orchestra, under guest conductor Wolfgang Heinz, brought out emotional undertones in the score as well as the colours in the music. 

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Oscar disgraced himself this evening. As soon as he entered he deposited a large amount of poop on

the stage. The I noticed he was led on by a handler not one of cast. He must have been behaving nervously. Fortunately in the BRB production the interval was only seconds away. Happy to there were no problems in the second act. 
Miki Mizutani as Lise was quite wonderful. Her technique is so secure and her acting was an absolute joy to watch. She has become one of the treasures of BRB. 

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31 minutes ago, Pulcinella said:


The name of the new pony is Oscar, who is a Welsh Mountain pony and has a whole page to himself in the programme.

Thanks, Pulcinella! I was going to ask if anyone had found out the pony's name but you've saved me the trouble. 

 

19 minutes ago, Tony Newcombe said:

Oscar disgraced himself this evening. As soon as he entered he deposited a large amount of poop on

the stage. The I noticed he was led on by a handler not one of cast. He must have been behaving nervously. Fortunately in the BRB production the interval was only seconds away. 

If it's any consolation (to Oscar?) Tony, Peregrine had exactly the same problem in 2018 in a BRB performance- same scene! Like today, it was in the evening performance of a two-show day, and luckily, the curtain comes down for the first interval soon after. I wonder if the two shows causes slight issues with their bowels because they are already tired or excited from an earlier performance. In any case, that was actually a bonus for a friend who came with us who had been "expecting ballet to be quite boring" who laughed, and applauded heartily when the curtain came down and declared it was the most entertaining bit of theatre he'd seen in a while. 

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2 hours ago, Tony Newcombe said:

Miki Mizutani as Lise was quite wonderful. Her technique is so secure and her acting was an absolute joy to watch. She has become one of the treasures of BRB. 

 

Grrrr.  I was so annoyed to have to miss her, but I was trying - unsuccessfully - to get back to London, and couldn't get to the theatre in time :(  I'd got my dates wrong: I'd thought Hirata was on before Mizutani.

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fantastic reviews, it seems like the performances are going brilliantly. Really looking forward to seeing this on Saturday (as I’m doing the matinee hopefully Oscar will keep the stage clean but equally I think I’d find it rather amusing if he didn’t and part of the joys of live performances being unpredictable!) 

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Yesterday’s afternoon was  just glorious - so happy to see ‘Fille’ again live. I don’t remember the pony ( must have been Peregrine then ) being led in by a ‘handler’ plus  a member of the corps before , tho it makes  perfect sense. However, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, expect my eye was just elsewhere on previous occasions. 

I enjoyed everyone’s performances and was particularly taken w Gus Payne as

Alain.  

 

 

 

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A little video of the Linares/Monaghan cast for everyone having Fille withdrawal symptoms.....

 

Also just saw some photos and a video of adorable little pony Oscar on BRB's Facebook stories (should be on Instagram stories too) which I think will last only one more hour. 

 

If you missed the stories, here's the video (no Oscar unfortunately but hopefully more photos of him will turn up later) 

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/YbBritnzeWJWPD5Z/

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As DelphiumBlue says, Gus Payne was very good as Alain. Alas, that was not true of last night's Alain, Tom Hazelby. He played him as an idiot, opening with a moronic grin, playing the role for laughs, not appreciating that the humour is in the choreography, and his dancing was unmusical. For the ballet to be fully successful each of the four main characters has to be ultimately sympathetic. Of the other roles, Miki danced beautifully as Tony says but, for me at least, didn't fully capture Lise's character, charming though she was. Mathias was blokeish and although he danced quite well his dancing wasn't as good as I expected from his past performances. Max made a good stab at the Widow, a bit gruffer and less affectionate than Rory. All the other dancers were good, with Olivia Chang Clarke 's charisma notable as one of Lise's friends- a step up from being a chicken on the opening night, where her smile was concealed! And Oscar behaved himself.

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