© Henrik Stenberg 'Caroline Mathilde' reviews Bojesen in reviews Blangstrup in reviews recent Royal Danish reviews more Jane Simpson reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

The young King - only two years older than his bride - was mentally ill, schizophrenic perhaps, alternating between childishness, sadistic violence and dreadful fear. He and Caroline had a son but she later took refuge in the arms of a German doctor, Johann Friedrich Struensee, who was one of the few who could calm the King and who consequently became extremely influential at the Danish court. The lovers were brought to ruin by a party led by the king's wicked (or at least deeply ambitious) stepmother: Caroline Mathilde was disgraced and Struensee sent to a horrific death (you really don't want to know). So if you're wondering what sort of an evening you might be going to spend, think Mayerling, but not nearly so cheerful.

Flippancy apart, it's impossible for someone who's grown up with Kenneth MacMillan's big historical ballets not to make comparisons with Flindt's work. When the Royal Danish Ballet showed Caroline Mathilde in London in the mid-1990s I remember thinking that Flindt and MacMillan had almost exactly complementary talents, and that a ballet with MacMillan making the big pas de deux and Flindt doing the corps de ballet work and the staging, might be a total success. Now I'm not so sure: I think they'd need someone else too, someone who could shape the ballet as a whole and cut out some of the many scenes which add nothing to the progress of the story and not much to our understanding of the characters. Caroline Mathilde goes on for over two hours, in two acts, and that's much, much too long.

One of the things I do like about Flindt is that - unlike MacMillan - he's not afraid to vary his narrative by straying out of 'reality' into theatrical fantasy. For instance there's a scene where King Christian and and his young wife appear on huge gilded pedestals which glide around the stage as the citizens acclaim them; later in private, the King first of all joins Caroline on her pedestal and then, petulantly, pushes her off: the sequence makes a number of important points very neatly whilst also being fun to watch. Unfortunately, clever devices don't make a ballet, and Flindt's actual choreography is disappointingly weak. His steps are repetitive and not very interesting, and - worse - they don't 'build': time after time a sequence starts by looking as if it's really going somewhere and then fizzles out in banality.

So, why would you want to spend an evening of your life with Caroline Mathilde? Well, the designs are very attractive, so whatever's going on, there's always an appealing stage picture to look at; and the score, which Flindt commissioned from Peter Maxwell Davies, is certainly worth hearing - though it's not the most danceable of music, at first acquaintance. Most of all, though, you go for the dancers, who give themselves as if they were showing us the greatest ballet ever written. The Danish company, of course, lavishes talent on even the smallest roles: there's a Nurse who appears for the briefest possible time - it's Lis Jeppesen; one of the Queen's maids has slightly more to do than the others - it's Diana Cuni; Peter Bo Bendixen creates an urbane, sympathetic statesman in about twenty seconds; and so on.

The best developed of the four major roles is that of the poor young King - in fact I've heard it suggested that Christian VII would be a more accurate title for the whole ballet. Flindt plays down the violence of the historical character, making him perhaps more sympathetic than he was in real life, and this suits Thomas Lund's interpretation: though it's impossible to like his Christian, it's even more impossible not to pity him. I can't begin to imagine what goes on in Lund's head while he's doing this, but what comes over is an identification with the role so complete that it's quite distressing to watch, to the extent that I was relieved to see an unmistakeably Lund mannerism creep in now and then, reassuring us that he's 'only acting', after all.
 

The lovers were Gudrun Bøjesen and Mads Blangstrup, excellently matched in looks and character. Perhaps they're both just slightly too reserved, too noble when it comes to their big pas de deux - I could imagine that Flindt's choreography might look a bit more convincing done with just a dash of vulgarity, which I don't think either of these two is capable of - but in the rest of the ballet I greatly admired them both. Bøjesen was particularly touching in the scenes with her little boy - there's a dance with him which is the only time in the whole piece that she looks truly happy, and it was beautifully done. (The boy, in case he grows up to be famous, was Lukas Ujvari; when we saw Caroline Mathilde in London it was Ulrik Birkkjaer, and he grew up to win the Erik Bruhn prize in Canada, just last week.) I'm not entirely sure how Flindt means us to see Struensee - Blangstrup's aristocratic presence makes him near-heroic, but his kindness towards the suffering King is quite hard to reconcile with the fact that he's blatantly cuckolding him at the same time. Silja Schandorff was the King's stepmother, cold, domineering and jealous. How much more effective she might be though, if the role were better made. She dances on pointe, and is dressed very like the other ladies of the court, so it's sometimes difficult even to pick her out. I kept wishing Flindt had given her fewer steps and more mime, to punch home who she is and why she behaves as she does.

In fact I kept wishing that Flindt had done a lot of things differently. It's rather sad, in retrospect, to see so much dancing talent poured into such a leaky vessel: the dancers make the evening, and they deserve much stronger material than this.