Scottish Ballet, 15/04/2022

Liszt (arr. Lanchberry, rev. Yates) : The Scandal at Mayerling

Scottish Ballet

Scottish Ballet Orchestra

Martin Yates

Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling is one of the biggest ballets in the Royal Ballet's repertoire, it calls for pretty much the full company (of around 70 dancers) to appear on stage, requires a large orchestra, and in its current (original) production, features monumental sets by John Georgiadis.  It is not what one might call 'touring-friendly'.  For a smaller company like Scottish Ballet to perform it was clearly going to require some serious revision, and that is what company director Christopher Hampson has delivered, with the full approval and cooperation of the choreographer's widow, and his estate.  Trimmed of a good forty minutes (mostly the largely political material), brought down to two acts from three, re-designed to a single, atmospheric set, and the orchestral score revised for a smaller orchestra, there was no sense of reduction, of loss of spectacle.  If I had a complaint, it might be that Rudolf's interactions with Mary are rather telescoped into the last half-hour or so, but otherwise, this was a convincing adaptation.

 With much of the political material removed, the focus falls even more sharply on Rudolf's interactions with  the various female figures in his life, and you pass more directly from one pas de deux to the next.  The result creates strong contrasts between the interpreters of these parts.  Roseanna Leney was the first up, as Countess Larisch, and although her dancing was good, she never quite put across the complexities of the character.  After Mary Vetsera, this is the most important female role, and to all intents and purposes, Larisch is the only character who displays any progression, and I never quite got that from Leney.  Both Marge Hendricks, as Empress Elisabeth, and Constance Devernay as Princess Stephanie, were excellent in their single major scenes, Devernay in particular in portraying the terrified exhaustion of her character.

Claire Souet was Mitzi Caspar; her solo didn't quite work for me, but the Mephisto Waltz sequence was excellent, while Sophie Martin was Mary, playfully demure in her scene 'at home', more provocative in the first big scene with Rudolf, but at her best in the final scene, where she projected a strong mix of devotion and confusion, not knowing really how to handle Rudolf's madness but completely willing to follow wherever he chooses.    

Evan Loudon (Rudolf) and Sophie Martin (Mary Vetsera)
The Scandal at Mayerling, Act 2
(© Andy Ross, 2022)

It was in this last scene that Evan Loudon's Rudolf finally came into his own; prior to that, he looked suitably brooding, but I wasn't getting that sense of the frenzy of a gradually disintegrating mind.  The fits of pain seemed to come out of nowhere, rather than boiling up from inside, and while his inebriated turn in the brothel scene was very good, he was somewhat upstaged by Jerome Barnes's Hungarian Officer.  In the last scene, however, the physical control was superb, that sense of his body feeling almost too heavy to move around beautifully conveyed.  

This revised version of Mayerling opens up the ballet to other companies and performances in a lighter, fresher design and a more flexible structure, for fewer dancers and a smaller orchestra, without ever betraying MacMillan's original vision.  

[Possibly 17th April, otherwise 23rd April-