Wolf Sadler's Wells, London EC1
Orfeo ed Euridice Edinburgh Festival Theatre
Dangerous Liaisons West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
Alain Platel includes dogs in his latest concoction, Wolf, because he wants to make points about packs. He's fascinated by how even marginalised groups of people establish some sense of community. Though humans don't go around sniffing each other's bottoms, they share basic strategies for survival with dogs.
In Wolf (named after Mozart, whose music it celebrates, as well as the canines' feral forebear), the performers inhabit a seedy urban mall, complete with shuttered-up shops, graffiti and overloaded washing lines. Classical musicians shelter in a cage on the upper level, descending occasionally to mix with the lowlifes. Mozart's arias, impeccably sung, inspire all kinds of dancing, soaring aerobatics, a fantasy orgy. Two dogs rut for real; the rest roam around, unconcerned by the mayhem.
Audience reaction reveals that many spectators are watching the animals more intently than their own kind. Laughter and shouts of protest punctuate the performance; a mini papillon tucked down a leotard gets its own round of applause. The show is circus, opera, dance-theatre. A deaf performer asks what music is about. The cast's attempts to answer are what Wolf is all about: ecstasy, misery, the animal condition. Life's a bitch but Mozart makes it better.
Opera North's new production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice started out as an Edinburgh Festival commission, staged by Italian choreographer Emio Greco and his partner, Pieter Scholten. Without their elaborate programme notes, you'd have a hard time divining their concept, somewhat at odds with Gluck's.
They have determined that Orfeo is trapped in defiant transition between the life of the body and that of the spirit, his rite of passage conducted by twin deities Amore (agile Claire Ormshaw) and Greco himself, the Isis and Osiris of the afterworld. Amore sings serenely of love's salvation, while Greco twitches and slithers galvanically. He represents the instinctive body, teetering between extinction and rebirth.
The abyss by which he hovers in silence at the end is the orchestra pit. Musicians and singers have had their say, dutifully rather than divinely; Greco then adds his mute gloss on the legend, offering an alternative interpretation after it's all over. Orfeo (countertenor Daniel Taylor) has, meanwhile, been united with Euridice (Isabel Monar), while the chorus rejoice. They move in stately fashion, rigid as Daleks in rotund costumes, commenting gravely on Orfeo's plight. Dancers in glittering black are intended to add meaning - try the programme for semi-enlightenment - rather than prance about as furies or blessed spirits.
The bleak result is hieratic, impressive but uninvolving. Greco and Scholten seem to wish the opera had concluded with Euridice's second death and Orfeo in limbo. Their direction isn't leading towards light and reconciliation; their Orfeo is Nosferatu, undead and unforgiven. They'd do well to create their own account and leave Gluck's alone.
Northern Ballet Theatre - based, like Opera North, in Leeds - has succumbed to the temptation of presenting Choderlos de Laclos's novel Dangerous Liaisons as a ballet. A plot based on letters requires more than a programme note, so David Nixon has resorted to spoken narration. The aged Marquise de Merteuil, puppet-mistress of the intrigues she sets in train, answers ques tions in flashback. A clumsy device, it reduces complex motives to banalities.
The marquise ends up in living hell, not that you'd know it from Patricia Doyle's dreary old crone. Natalie Leftwich is far subtler as her young incarnation, snub nose and wide eyes disguising a Persian cat's vicious streak. Nixon discloses the sexual scheming in multi-focus scenes; he's an accomplished storyteller. Inevitably, though, some characters' fates become perfunctory as the focus narrows to Merteuil and her partner in crime, Valmont - Jimmy Orrante, elegantly louche.
Vivaldi's music, played behind the versatile set, accompanies dancing that is dynamic rather than dainty. Nixon infuses his liaisons with energy: the ballet is more vital than the killer text that drags it down. Why not resort to surtitles, as Opera North does?
