Showing @ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until 12 March @ 19:30

Not being a massive fan of musicals I came to Northern Ballet‘s production of Cleopatra pre-prejudiced against Claude-Michel Schönberg’s music, my expectations were of a bloated Lloyd-Webberesque score overwhelming the dance.  However, preconceptions aside, apart from being a little bombastic and borrowing themes from everyone from Dvorak and Grieg the music was the least of this shows problems.

No, where this show fell down was with David Nixon’s direction and choreography which was leaden, literal and on occasion ludicrous.

Nixon’s choice to dot every I and cross every historical T made what could have been a sensuous and powerful piece of dance into something that was, when it wasn’t being dull, often unintentionally funny. The assassination of Caesar became some sort of playground scrap and Ptolemy’s drowning was more like a rag doll being over-enthusiastically hand washed in a sink. Add to that the sex shop costumed Roman soldiers and the Egyptian handmaidens who belonged in the Zeigfield Follies and it was hard to keep a straight face all the way through this show.

What made the overall failure of Cleopatra so dispiriting is that hidden amongst the banality there were moments of real brilliance that shone briefly and then faded. In particular the duets between Cleopatra and both Caesar and Mark Anthony were bewitching and the sinuous couplings thrummed with erotic charge. It was in these few moments that the audience got to see why premier dancer Martha Leebolt has made such a name for herself over the last few years.

This was a work of missed opportunity. There’s no doubt that the story of Cleopatra has the drama to make a fine ballet but this wasn’t it. Something more subtle, something that dealt with the woman and the queen in conflict might have contained the exquisite moments in this piece better, as it was they felt like diamonds hidden amongst rhinestones.

Every company has a mis-step now and again and this was Northern Ballet‘s. But they are a fine company and capable, as in the best moments here, of greatness. When they return lets hope that they produce something more worthy of their gifts.