“Sensual, dark, and emotionally unflinching, Snow White: The Sacrifice reimagines the classic tale for a 16+ audience with striking physicality and thematic depth.”
For those who have seen balletLORENT's 'Snow White', a dance-theatre production for audiences age 5 and above, perhaps one of the most surprising things about the Newcastle-based company's other take on the same fairy tale - a version subtitled The Sacrifice tailored to spectators 16+ - is how alike they are. There are subtle differences that edge the latter production towards adult sensibilities, including an increased, almost Bacchanalian sensuality and deep-dyed cruelty in certain passages. But what is remarkable about both performances is their emotional maturity and thematic sophistication. In neither one does the choreographer and director Liv Lorent pull any punches,
This is far from a Disney-fied interpretation of 'Snow White'. Faithfully following the voice-over narration of a text by Carol Ann Duffy, the territory that the show will explore is indicated from the get-go. We are first presented with a woman (the haunting and long-limbed Caroline Reece) atop a tiered and curtained vanity table. The lady is a queen busy sewing a doll to the sound of a ticking clock. The focus of her attention could be a fashion accessory, or possibly the substitute for an actual child. But clearly it is not her only interest, as at one point she gazes into a hand-held mirror.
How deftly this opening scene encapsulates ideas about time and ageing, the parent-child relationship and self-obsession.
This queen is not alone. She has a king. Without much ado, we observe the pair having a stylised rendition of sex. Two significant events soon occur, both offstage: the queen gives birth, and the king dies. Celebration and mourning ensue. Teased, tellingly, by the queen with an apple, the now single-parented child dubbed Snow White (Virginia Scudeletti, perfectly matched with her role) pops up out of a drawer. She and her royal mum are playmates; they even bathe together, scrubbing up and beating themselves and each other with branches. Meanwhile a small band of miners - traditionally referred to as the seven dwarfs - toil on their behalf to keep the palace and all the privileges available therein running.
Lorent's buoyantly industrious choreography for the miners is notable. But so too are the story's metaphorical wrinkles. The queen, we are told, wants a husband. Badly. A prospective new king (Toby Fitzgibbons) comes calling but - uh-oh - he only truly fancies her nubile daughter. Ever loyal to her mother, Snow White has to fend him off. The queen, incensed, symbolically rips apart her old doll.
Gradually this fairy tale drama tips over into horror and tragedy. The age-fearing queen's destructive jealousy knows no bounds. Trapped in a kind of bloody stupor, she consumes a heart that she believes was extracted from her daughter's corpse. Gruesome? Yes, but dramatically valid. Her relationship with her mirror is as complicated as that with Snow White. This fateful object is strikingly realised by Lorent and the dancer Aisha Naamani, a marvellously bendy figure who appears to be entirely made of mercury. (The costuming credit is shared between Nasir Mazhar and Libby El-Alfy). The mirror is its owner's alter ego, conspirator and conscience, and it cannot lie. It may not be inaccurate to say that in some ways it owns the queen.
Echoed and amplified by the mirror, the queen's behaviour is extreme and savage. These qualities are toned down in the more child-friendly 'Snow White'. In both it and the grown-up version, however, Lorent is careful to balance Duffy's dark scenario with grace notes of physical humour. This is mainly sourced in the miners' household, where Snow White finds refuge from her psycho-emotionally misguided mother's monstrous decisions. Set to a jauntily pulsating track by Lorent's trusted collaborator, the composer Murray Gold, a fleetly comic, kinetically detailed episode of daily domestic revelry is one of the work's highlights.
Although 'Snow White' may be shot through with the pain and trauma produced by the queen's festering ego, it is, importantly, also concerned with recovery and redemption. The grief that arises after our young heroine tastes the poisoned apple is palpable. The huntsman's efforts to revive the person he loves are both tender and desperate; he squats above and lays upon Snow White, coiling round and crawling over her body before delivering a liberating kiss.
Pitched on some dreamy continuum between ecstasy and nightmare, this scene exemplifies Lorent's unique aesthetic. The dancers really take to it - and that includes the children in the cast (none of whom, I was reassured, have been exposed to the more adult scenes in 'The Sacrifice'). The show as a whole looks magical. The central structure of Phil Eddolls' set is like a many-sided, multi-level climbing gym that implies, by turns. both indoors and out. It has character. At one juncture I noticed how its shadow seemed briefly to loom ominously on the backdrop. On that score, It's worth noting too how consistently atmospheric and, occasionally, almost hallucinatorily vivid Malcolm Rippeth's lighting is. And speaking of score, Gold's music offers an excellent cushion of orchestral lyricism and rhythm throughout.
But regardless of what age range a given performance of' 'Snow White' is intending to cover, the elemental magic at work in it lies not only in surface skills and pleasures or admirable production values. The feelings that resides at the core of balletLORENT's rich piece of dance fantasy fiction are just as fabulous.
Donald Hutera is a veteran freelance arts journalist (for The Times and many other publications and website) as well as a devising performer (Rhiannon Faith Company, Posh Club*Dance Club, Christopher Matthews/formed view), erstwhile curator, occasional dramaturg or mentor and annual PR (for Taiwan Season showcase at Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Snow White: The Sacrifice is on tour to:
Sadlers Wells East, London
Connaught Theatre, Worthing
Hippodrome Darlington
Cast Doncaster
