© Laurent Liotardo ENB 'Manon' reviews 'Manon' reviews Oaks in reviews Edur in reviews recent ENB reviews more Bruce Marriott reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Created in 1974 by Kenneth MacMillan for The Royal Ballet, Manon has long captured the public's imagination and is in the repertoire of major companies all around the world. This is ballet and drama mixed into a potent grown-up cocktail involving the tragic elements of love, sleaze, sex and villainous evil. It can only end one way but getting there touches your soul and Manon's death in a Louisiana swamp comes as sad relief to us all by the end. Drained, like her, you just can't take any more.

As suspected from my first look, it's design and lighting that most sets this version apart from the much-loved Royal Ballet production and gives fresh space to the steps that ENB very well inhabit. The new designs, by Mia Stensgaard, were originally for Royal Danish Ballet and are in sparse good taste - less is more in Scandinavian design, yes? All the clutter and detail of the Nicholas Georgiadis sets traditionally associated with the ballet are gone. Now I deeply love that evocative 18th century clutter but these designs, aside from looking good, also allow the eye to rest and see more of the steps, especially in the opening and closing scenes. The effect is the more magnificent because ENB, unencumbered by years of performance and the smudging that creeps in, are doing the steps with great and fresh clarity. As with the designs, I love the way the Royal Ballet do Manon, like a beautifully made Swiss watch, but it is ENB that made me see new things in an old friend and for that I thank everybody greatly. It's deeply bloody impressive actually.

Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur in Manon
© Laurent Liotardo

Of individual performances I have much good to report. Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur (affectionately known as Tom and Ag) led out the team in what is Agnes's last year before retiring. Hers is a natural telling rather than a 'knowing tart from the outset' type and it works well. Ditto Tom in a role much less princely than normal. The ballet hangs on its pas de deux and they were unusually flawless and smooth for a premiere. Lescaut and his Mistress were cast at principal level with Dmitri Gruzdyev doing a very colourful drunken pas de deux (in a league with Samodurov's a week earlier at the Royal Opera House and one of the best I've seen in recent times). And Elena Glurdjidze brings believable humanity to the long-suffering mistress. Special praise too for Michael Coleman's Old Man in Act 1 - a real, believable character. After that the senior casting was more problematic - Anthony Dowson's Monsieur GM seems a very poor rich man, often receding into the background and determinedly down-playing the evil nature of the man to no good effect at all. Fabian Reimair's Gaoler struggled because his uniform made him look like a little Napoleon - hard to project out of that when all is so new. But initial quibbles aside nothing stops Tom and Ag propelling the ballet to our hearts.

Manon is one of the 20th Century's great dramatic dance works - it's to the nation's great good fortune that ENB are touring it and doing it such justice to boot. So park the kids and go see a piece that makes you understand there is more to ballet than tutus or leotards.