MaddAddam has left me with two questions: first, how to categorise this latest epic venture by Wayne McGregor and secondly, does it matter that the vast majority of the audience will, for the vast majority of the time, have no idea whatsoever what is going on?
If you have read Margaret Atwood’s trilogy of novels which have “inspired” this three-act piece, you will recognise the characters, and will be able to fill in the gaping holes in the narrative produced by McGregor and his team (Sets: We Not I, costumes: Gareth Pugh, Lighting: Lucy Carter, Film Designer: Ravi Deepres, Dramaturg: Uzma Hameed) but you will wonder how they chose what to leave out and what to include, and perhaps, like me, you will be annoyed at the depiction of the three central characters, Snowman/Jimmy, Oryx and Crake: all three are seriously underwritten. Even their deaths are depicted in a slash-and-burn instant in the midst of a maelstrom of activity going on around them; when I mentioned this to my companion (who has not read the books) it transpired that she had not noticed Crake slitting Oryx’s throat, one of the most significant and shocking moments in the trilogy.
Apparently, those who saw the original premiere by the National Ballet of Canada or the rehearsals in London advise letting the beauty of the production “wash over you” rather than trying to understand it. Not good enough, surely, to justify either the cost of mounting it or its inclusion in the repertoire of one of the world’s leading ballet companies.
If you can “just let it wash over you”, there’s much to delight. The combination of spectacular backdrops and evocative film projections are visually stunning, and Max Richter’s score (more of a soundtrack as the choreography in no way references it) is harmless enough; the music for Act 2 is dynamic and propulsive but much of the rest is repetitive. If you can follow the story you will be fascinated by Atwood’s prescience in conjuring a dystopian future where the world has been devastated by a Waterless Flood, a plague that has wiped out the human race apart from a few survivors. The arrival of Covid in 2020 must, to Atwood’s readers, have seemed frighteningly like the fulfilment of a prophecy.
In Act 1 we meet Jimmy (Joseph Sissens), living in a tree, foraging for sustenance, believing himself to be the only human left alive. We also meet, via Jimmy’s memories, the beautiful Oryx (Fumi Kaneko), Crake’s lover but also loved by Jimmy, and Crake himself (William Bracewell), a scientific genius. Toby (Melissa Hamilton), Ren (Sae Maeda), Amanda (Leticia Dias) and Zeb (Lucas B. Brændsrød), survivors of a pre-apocalyptic activist community called God’s Gardeners, led by Adam (Giacomo Rovero), a kind of spiritual leader, have also survived, along with a community called the Painballers, violent criminals led by Blanco (Gary Avis), Toby’s abuser.
Act 2 reveals the pre-pandemic world, via the multi-player computer game Extinctathon played by Jimmy and Crake. Against the background of a chaotic world descending into ungovernability, gradually being destroyed by the greed of large corporations, Crake begins to envision a better, peaceful world, and creates the Crakers, serene, exquisitely beautiful hominids who will breed with the survivors to produce a new race. At the same time he engineers a pleasure pill which becomes the means of transmission of the deadly virus. As Act 2 closes, Crake kills Oryx, and Jimmy kills Crake, leaving himself, as he thinks, alone on the planet.
Act 3 looks into the future, where the Crakers and the survivors have merged into the new race of peace-lovers, but, deviating from Crake’s plan, have retained a sense of spirituality. Jimmy and Toby have handed down a verbal history to successive generations; they enact these stories using effigies, and seek out artefacts from the old world, including the gun used by Toby in her pre-pandemic seditious activities.
Some of the heavy-handed devices employed to elucidate the story feel like cheating. Voiceovers, captions projected onto the downstage scrim present throughout Act 2, a Pharmacy sign over the cage structure where the pills are handed out, radio distortion of the soundscape – all these bludgeon us around the head whilst doing nothing to move the story forward.
The choreography consists mainly of McGregor’s usual thrusts, jerks and twists, although there are moments in Act 2 where bursts of fast chaîné turns interspersed with grands jetés, provide relief from the monotony. In the end, the magnificence of the performances carries the piece. Kaneko, Sissens, Bracewell and Hamilton, and Marco Masciari as a descendant of spiritual leader Adam in Act 3, burnish the dull into the sublime.
Perhaps, as my companion pointed out, the litmus test is whether one would want to see it again. I would. See it, but don’t expect ballet.
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