‘This is too dramatic!’ exclaims Frida, our eldest young reviewer as the lights go up after the first half of ballet LORENT’s spectacular Imagine Children’s Festival production of Rapunzel. There are four good reasons for the abundant dramatic intrigue causing her to sit ever closer to the edge of her seat: the combination of Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, choreographer Liv Lorent MBE, composer Murray Gold and the Royal Northern Sinfonia orchestra, writes Ed, Frida and Woody Gray.
Poet Carol Ann Duffy plants phrases in your soul and lets them grow inside you until you can taste them, whether sumptuous or bilious. Actor Lesley Sharp brings a captivating sense of cadence to the steely precision of Duffy’s sparse words in her narration. Liv Lorent’s choreography is suitably entrancing. Known for his love of tree climbing rather than his love of ballet, our youngest young reviewer, Woody, was delighted by the dancers weaving up and down a stark metallic stage set lit to cast dramatic expressionistic shadows as it transformed from bed to tower. Murray Gold’s score for the RNS is everything you would hope for from the composer of Doctor Who, Gentleman Jack and It’s A Sin – lilting melodies, tribal folky rhythms and ominous Brechtian-infused insanity that perfectly complements the onstage drama.
In Duffy’s hands, this Rapunzel is no ordinary retelling of the familiar fable of female suppression and conformity – long-haired lass longing for a princely saviour. Instead, Duffy magnifies the heartbreak of Rapunzel’s initially childless parents, epitomised by the oversized bed frame looming large in the action. A scene of happy couples dancing around a maypole with real life babies and infants on stage – much to our delight – is a triumphant and tender celebration of fertility. Rapunzel’s parents at first join in with the dance before slipping away to watch from the sidelines, alone in childless yearning.
Dark feminine power appears in the form of a whip-wielding witch with creepy Komodo dragons crawling from under her skirts. She too yearns for a child and grows the spinach-like healing rampion that Rapunzel’s mother craves in her own quest for fecundity. Desperate to ease his wife’s suffering the soon-to be-dad makes a Faustian pact with the witch. The consequent wrenching of newborn Rapunzel (named after the German word for rampion) from her mother’s arms is very moving to behold.
The witch savaging Rapunzel’s locks with giant silver scissors is a reminder of current female suppression in countries where letting down your hair can lead to a prison sentence or worse. Duffy’s Rapunzel is a strong young woman, determined to right the wrongs that surround her, freeing herself from binding feminine expectation and manipulation or weak masculinity. Banged up in a tower for expressing her nascent femininity and challenging established authority makes Rapunzel entirely complicit in her emancipation, eventually bringing her own infant into the world full of hope as a single mother while her prince stumbles blind and lost in the wilderness.
Imagine Festival’s boldly relevant reworking of Rapunzel is a wonderful introduction to ballet that will ring true to youngsters negotiating a shifting world of gender identity and the quest for gender parity, even if the deeper themes escape them for now. Parents will recognise the message to step aside and let nature take its course without trampling on the precious rampion they are rearing.
