Stretton Debut Strained.

The Royal Ballet Royal Opera House, Covent Garden London, England July 26-31, 2002

Ross Stretton, the now-former artistic director of Britain's Royal Ballet, ended his first season at Covent Garden in a muddy puddle of controversy. His dancers, and their union, Equity, the British Actors Union, were questioning his casting practices, and many of the London critics were deploring his artistic choices. New artistic directors are traditionally given a honeymoon period, but Stretton's proved short if hardly sweet. Indeed, the groundswell of London murmurs seemed suggestive more of divorce than honeymoon.

The choice of repertoire was indeed uninspired. A special folly was the neglect of the company's heritage Ashton repertoire--its one serious claim to be regarded as one of the world's great companies. This was restricted to a handful of performances of A Month in the Country and Marguerite and Armand this season, while next season features only Scenes de ballet. Match this against the loving care lavished by New York City Ballet on Balanchine and Robbins, or the Royal Danish's curatorship of Bournonville. Britain's Royal Ballet is by contrast doing a lousy job with Ashton, which if continued will, in my opinion, inexorably lower the company's standing to provincial status.

Stretton has had some successes. The new addition of John Cranko's Onegin, a production I have not yet seen, to the programming is sensible, even overdue; of the new staging of Rudolf Nureyev's production of Don Quixote I will have more to say later. The revivals of Remanso, by Nacho Duato, and In the middle, somewhat elevated, by William Forsythe, were unexceptionable and unimaginative but decently enough danced, while the commission of Tryst, a new ballet by Christopher Wheeldon, which I also have yet to see, was politically adroit and generally well received by audiences and critics alike.

On the whole, the level of dancing has continued the gradual improvement of the last couple of seasons--its current ranking could reasonably be put as slightly lower than the San Francisco Ballet--and Stretton's acquisition of Robert Tewsley from the Stuttgart Ballet seems an especially smart move. Yet performance standards, judging by three of Don Quixote and three of Coppelia during the final two weeks of the season (when admittedly the troupe had just returned from an evidently exhausting Australian tour), generally lacked much inspiration, despite a few forceful performances. Good companies, let alone great, do not tire so readily.

Among the absences from the roster through injury was the company darling, Alina Cojocaru, as well as Tamara Rojo and Darcey Bussell. The staging of the Nureyev production of Don Quixote, using the dull Australian sets of Anne Fraser and the original costumes by Barry Kay, was less effective than it should have been. The staging was by Australian Mark Kay, but Stretton would surely have done better to have brought over a regisseur from Nureyev's Paris Opera Ballet and thus acquired a more stylistically authentic version.

The three Basilios--the veteran Jonathan Cope, the promising Ivan Putrov, just promoted to principal, and most of all, a guest artist, the fiery Carlos Acosta--were markedly more impressive than their respective Kitris, a mechanical Miyako Yoshida, a pert Laura Morera, and a modestly sizzling Marianela Nunez. Most of the other performers never even reached beyond a serviceable mediocrity, although Justin Meissner proved an-impressive Gypsy Boy and Luke Heydon, probably the best of the Royal Ballet character dancers, made the most of his few chances as the comic suitor Gamache.

The Coppelia, also a new production this season, looked disturbingly like the Don Quixote, as in peas and pods. Not seen with The Royal Ballet for many years, it is a restaging by Anthony Dowell and others of Ninette de Valois's 1954 production, itself partly based on the St. Petersburg staging in the early 1900s, with a few choice bits added by Alexandra Danilova, Frederic Franklin, and de Valois herself. The 1954 scenery by Osbert Lancaster has been reconstructed or at least refurbished, but the original Lancaster costumes have fared less happily in both color and cut.

The casts were jolly rather than dazzling, with once again the principal males--Putrov and Acosta, together with the superb Johan Kobborg, a man born to play Franz--outshining their ballerinas, here a dutifully competent Jane Burn and Belinda Hatley and, with Acosta, Nunez finding fine form as the best of the three Swanildas. Heydon made an intelligent shot at Dr. Coppelius; William Tuckett rather less so.

Editor's Note: On September 25, following his first season with The Royal, Stretton announced his resignation. Royal Ballet Assistant Director Monica Mason had been named interim artistic director until the company could find a replacement for Stretton. For details, see News, page 36.