History is always presented with a viewpoint or two.
Imagine if Myrta were the narrator at our performance of Giselle. We’ve already read all the news accounts, watched Scott Pelley’s scorching segment about Myrta on 60 Minutes, and cringed at Bari Weiss’s interference to balance the segment with sympathy for the Queen of the Wilis — “She’s just misunderstood.” But we know the facts despite Myrta spinning her story of victimization and dedication to protecting young women jilted before they could marry. She casts aspersions on Giselle as someone who wants to take over the Wilis. Finally, Myrta alludes to a future Act III where Giselle is shuttled off to the Rhineland Zuchthaus for a final haircut. It certainly would be a different ballet, wouldn’t it? Well, if anybody could sell us on the idea it would be the dance actress Charlotta Öfverholm.
Ms. Öfverholm and the Scottish Ballet opened their production of Mary, Queen of Scots at the Koch Theater Thursday night. It is a marvelous piece of dance theater. Ms. Öfverholm stars as the elderly and dying Elizabeth I whose selective memory recounts important episodes in her life and rationalizes them as though she were pleading for the Gates of Heaven to open for her. She dance-explains how she regretted having to lop off the head of her cousin, Mary Stuart, but she had to in order to end Mary’s threat to her reign over the kingdom.
Ms. Öfverholm, who is a spry 60 years old, is the blazing star of this production. Her contemporary dance vocabulary, honed in part at the Alvin Ailey School here in New York, is as eloquent and vibrant as it could be. Every sign of age that she possesses enhances the performance and makes it more authentic and relatable than if a younger artist made up to look like an elderly Elizabeth I were performing the role. On Thursday night she conveyed Elizabeth’s cunning, remorse, fake remorse, and her steel grip on power in the kingdom via her amazing flexibility, coordination, and mastery of the contemporary choreography. Her characterization was a Royal reputation rehabilitation that was extremely convincing. By the end of the show, we loved her so much that it didn’t really matter what she did to poor Mary Stuart.
The young Elizabeth I was played by Knicks-sized Harvey Littlefield in appropriate orange wig, occasionally on stilts, and thoroughly captivating. Mary Stuart, danced by Roseanna Leney, was assigned to dance en pointe and effectively conveyed Mary’s victimization and good heart. The character of Death, portrayed by Kayla-Maree Tarantolo in a lime green jester outfit with cone hat, gently coaxed Elizabeth through her final day on Earth with the good humor that we all could use when that time comes. The entire cast, including the corps de ballet, was phenomenal.
This production, choreographed by Sophie Laplane and co-created by James Bonas, enjoys dramatic scenery by Soutra Gilmour who most recently designed the haunting Broadway set for Waiting for Godot starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. The overall concept owes to the influence of Angelin Preljocaj’s canon, absent his choreographic gifts, but relies too much on frenetic arm movements that is a typical feature of middling contemporary choreography. Here, it doesn’t matter because most everything else about the production is exceptional. Given that this is a theater production at its heart, the cinematic score by Mikael Karlsson & Michael P Atkinson is forgivable — except for the obvious lifting of Philip Glass phrases — and includes a significant and beautifully performed cello solo. We would credit the cellist from the New York City Ballet Orchestra who we guess was Stephen Perkyns, but we’re not sure because there was no cast & orchestra list provided with the program.
Presenting this story to a New York audience is a challenging task. The Scottish Ballet’s advance work explaining the story was fairly good and sufficient. Getting New Yorkers to pay attention to it before sitting down to watch what they are expecting to be a ballet is quite another chore. It would be akin to presenting the opera Nixon in China at Teatro Colon.
We thought the evening was an overall high success and happy that Scottish Ballet shared this production with us. Our H.H. Pump Bump Award, a coronation stiletto for a cherished Elizabeth II, is bestowed upon Charlotta Öfverholm.
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