I am hoping that Louisa will become my Permanent Durham/Wear correspondent; to thrill and entice you lot to get your bums on seats, further south than I review.
Louisa's theatre review site can be found HERE.
She can be contacted through the wonderful medium of twitter HERE.
RapunzelGala Theatre, Durham
18th October 2011
BalletLORENT's modern day retelling of classic brothers Grimm fairytale Rapunzel through contemporary dance, written by Carol Ann Duffy, and in partnership with the innovative theatre of the north Northern Stage was insistent with detail but gave little narrative away. The lack of narrative retelling was a sheer disappointment, seeing as the show was selling a big literary name. This is where the primary problem begins, it is often difficult to synch a performance piece of two genres, and make sure that both are equally equilibrated. Whilst dance is a communicative genre, those alien to the story may miss crucial symbolic elements, but on the hand other this dance version of Rapunzel is so visually striking that detail is the name of the game. Choreographer Liz Lorent was quoted in Journal Live as saying that ' Most of us remember the tower and the hair, but are a bit hazy on the rest of the story' which is a truthful statement, as other fairytales have outnumbered Rapunzel in popularity and most audiences only really chose to remember the happy ever after.....
Evidently the main detail is the characters climbing up the tower on her hair to kiss the princess, and this is what worked the best as all other insignificant detail tended to fade out. Lorent hasn't really delivered a bold and promising rendition of Rapunzel, but this is hardly a just critique to embark upon, as the main artwork lay in well directed dance choreography and movement. I felt the show was not what it advertised, in that it was not a classical ballet piece and was more focused on physical theatre pieces.
Rapunzel runs until Saturday 20th October
Louisa Jane Robinson
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