It was up to London, this weekend past, to see the Royal Ballet’s latest production of The Sleeping Beauty at the Royal Opera House. Ballet is somewhat beyond my expertise—I couldn’t have said, for example, what it was that made my wife and her mother remark that the Lilac Fairy seemed nervous—but that is by-the-by.

I found more than enough interest in the story itself, based on Charles Perrault’s La Belle au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty). There is a great deal of enthusiasm for fantasy in the classical ballets, and the genre seems to lend itself to the medium. The Sleeping Beauty is a perfect example: with it’s good-versus-evil plot, it is classic high fantasy, although not as we know it today.

The conflict between good (as represented by the Lilac Fairy) and evil (the wicked Carabosse) dominates the plot and music for most of the ballet. Only in the final act (of three, plus a prologue) does the story diverge from this theme: it is nothing but a drawn-out “and they lived happily ever after”, as the eponymous Beauty is wedded to her Prince over the span of 40 minutes. The result is that The Sleeping Beauty loses its internal consistency in a way that does not occur in any of the other fantasy-themed ballets with which I am familiar. I had the strange sensation that these guests in my head had rather overstayed their welcome.

Anyhow, I’ll concede that (i) the wedding-scene blowout was composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s [Update: and theatre director Ivan Vsevolozhsky's, and choreographer Marius Petipa's; see how little I know?] deliberate intention, and (ii) this is no indictment on the performance itself. It’s worth noting that we attended a matinee showing, and there was a definite trend in the audience demographics towards young girls and their mothers. The little girls aren’t really there to see art; they are there to see the world’s best performers doing things they might only dream of; but what a dream! It is a fantasy of a different kind, and one that doubtless serves the ballet, the children and their parents very well.

And this production, in particular? My consultant critics inform me that it was a fairly solid, not spectacular, performance.

Rating: (abstained)