Pigeons scoot through the sky, trees quiver and the sun won’t set. Regent’s Park at solstice season is a dreamy location – especially with the Open Air Theatre’s trio of dream ballets from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s gamechanging musicals of the 1940s.
Drew McOnie, the theatre’s artistic director, is also a choreographer placing dance at the heart of his programme. There’s mentoring for emerging choreographers and a “dance takeover” in July. For the dream ballets, he asks three stars of British dance to tackle one apiece.
All three were originally created by the redoubtable Agnes De Mille, gutsy choreographer on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first three musicals. Her great innovation was the dream ballet – an ambitious dance sequence that foregrounds themes, drags characters’ anxieties to the surface, and lets bodies evoke things they can’t admit to themselves.
On Oklahoma!, de Mille resisted Hammerstein’s call for a light-hearted ballet to close the first act. It had to show the heroine’s subconscious conflict – and “dreams of anxiety,” she insisted, “are full of horror and ominous doom.” For good measure, she added, “Mr Hammerstein, there’s no sex in this play!”
There’s precious little sex in the new versions, and limited psychological turmoil. McOnie’s three choreographers all develop similar scenarios: an older male figure controlling five dances like a puppeteer. Developing three facets of the same scenario dilutes their impact: watching another capricious manipulator get his comeuppance feels over-familiar. It’s a shame, because the evening is packed with treats.
Kate Prince (who leads hip hop company ZooNation) uses Carousel, its romantic sweep a cruel accompaniment to dancers tethered by scarlet ropes. Tommy Franzen (who last week won big at the National Dance Awards) is their smirking puppet master, moving with daunting speed and intensity. Even when displaced by the plush Deavion Brown, Franzen remains meltingly deft, with sideways spins out of nowhere. The dancers scurry back to an oppressive past, rather than dare to hope.
Julia Cheng (Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof) tackles the unfamiliar score from Allegro, a rare Rogers and Hammerstein flop. The music is grand, the orchestra swinging fast and funny. Cheng leans into jaunty eccentricity: her cast of street dance virtuosi swoop and scuttle, skeetering back on their heels or capping elegant lines with a cheeky twisting hand. Paris Crossley and Jonadette Carpio are especially zippy.
In Oklahoma!’s dream ballet, Shelley Maxwell (a brilliant theatre movement director) creates the nastiest puppet master: Christopher Akrill goes full evil clown, slathered in white face paint, red smearing his chops. A preening narcissist, he toys with eager, suited dancers – it’s like an episode of The Apprentice with added choreography.
June is bustin’ out all over, and the feisty dancing foregrounds London’s freelance dance talent. And the live orchestra of Sinfonia Smith Square whizz between romp and romance, enjoying Rodgers’ melodies which wrap themselves around your heart. It’s a flawed evening – but one which dances endearingly into the belated sunset.
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre; openairtheatre.com
