Ballet is so often a medium for dark drama and tragedy that it was especially uplifting to experience this pairing of two whimsical works for Polish National Ballet: one a doublet and jerkin affair from yesteryear and the other – by comparison – a slapstick farce from “yesterday”. This double tribute to the music of Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-72) has proved such a successful marriage that the two ballets have run side-by-side since 2019, revived to sell-out audiences in each successive season.
By contrast, Anna Hop’s Husband and Wife reveals a very unhappy marriage! It’s a tastefully observed sex romp in which everybody is getting coital with each other. Hop has mostly controlled her four central performers in tight choreography, but she loosens the reins into an improvised spontaneity for the closing stages. The outcome is a visually attractive package that appears like a silent movie of the Buster Keaton variety, especially in the intricate, acrobatic timing of the characters’ interactions. The sex scenes are rib-crackingly hilarious (while also being potentially rib-cracking for the energetic performers)!
We first encounter Wacław (Marco Esposito) and Elwira (Joanna Drabik) at the dinner table, their mutual animosity played out in slow motion as they hurl food, plates and utensils at each other, the items’ apparent flight enabled by a darkly-dressed, shadowy corps de ballet passing them from hand-to-hand. They are also the silent deliverers of lovers’ messages, swooping in with sheets of paper like Hedwig delivering notes from Hogwarts. Pinpoint timing is critical, and the ensemble rose to the challenge with alacrity.
Wacław is bonking Justysia, the maid (a coquettish performance by Yume Okano) whilst Elwira gets down and dirty at every opportunity with Wacław’s best friend, Alfred (a charismatic and audacious display by Diogo de Oliveira). Completing the complexity, Alfred and Justysia are also lovers!
With its surprising epilogue – no spoiler, here - Husband and Wife plays out like a mix between a soap opera and a classic English farce (think Alan Ayckbourn or Brian Rix), peppered like rapid machine-gun fire with memorable moments of silent comedy gold. To emphasise both his machismo and the hilarity factor, Esposito sports a thick wig of chest hair and a Tom Selleck moustache, while Drabik – the only survivor of the 2019 premiere – exhibits perfect comic timing. Wrapped in a towel fresh from the bath, she catches sight of herself in the mirror and is horrified at how her body has aged (lifting her breasts and then seeing them droop without her handheld support) while simultaneously, Justysia is enjoying a narcissistic examination of her own limber body in another mirror upstage.
Hop has a refreshingly cavalier attitude to her score, here mixing the live orchestral music of Moniuszko (mostly taken from the ballet In the Quarters and song Dumka) with recordings of songs that fit the solos of each character, such as Sarah Vaughan singing Whatever Lola Wants and Elvis Presley’s It’s Now or Never. This musical risk-taking works splendidly.
Sarmatian Parable is a curious old-fashioned piece by the late Conrad Drzewiecki, which was premiered in Poznan in February 1975 by Polish Dance Theatre (the contemporary company that Drzewiecki had founded two years’ earlier) and is also set to Moniuszko’s music through a rearrangement of the fantasy overture, Fairy Tale.
The scenario is similar to the warring families of Romeo and Juliet with two neighbouring noblemen, Notary Milczek (Vadzim Kezik) and Squire Raptusiewicz (Paweł Koncewoj), locked in a bitter feud. As in Shakespeare, their quarrel is complicated by the Notary’s son (another Wacław, played as an endearing ingenu by Royal Ballet School alumnus, Laurence Elliott) being in love with the Squire’s ward, Klara (a matching ingénue performance by Nikola Dworecka). The Squire has his eye on an attractive widow, Podstolina (Yana Shtanhei) who, in another twist, was once Wacław’s lover and the main cast is augmented by Papkin (a comic performance by Bartosz Zyśk), a conceited courtier (mixing my ballet references, think Gamache from Don Quixote) who hopes to marry Klara (just as Gamache hankers for the hand of Kitri).
Thankfully, the denouement brings all the conflicts to an end. The Squire and Notary reluctantly patch up their differences under the influence of the parish priest and a double marriage (Wacław/Klara and the Squire/Podstolina) ensues. Everyone, including the hapless Papkin (again like Gamache), is happily paired off!
The extraordinary thing about Sarmatian Parable is its brevity. This complex plot plays out in little more than 20 minutes, a sprint through all these complexities. Drzewiecki’s economy of structure and time is admirable but its all so fast that any subtlety in the plot development is lost and, amongst the crowds of people on stage, I found myself wondering how it was that Wacław overcame the familial squabble to win the hand of Klara. It had something to do with a forged letter, drugged wine, and a kidnap (but I learned most of this from the programme note rather than the blurred action on stage)!
These two ballets have now been performed together for five consecutive years and unlike the marriage in Husband and Wife it’s clearly a successful union that is due many more anniversaries.
