In the three decades since founding balletLORENT, the Newcastle-based choreographer and director Liv Lorent has in more recent times developed a sustained interest in crafting typically large-scale, dance-based theatre productions based upon fairy tales. Aimed at family audiences, works such as ;Rapunzel', 'Rumpelstiltskin' and 'The Lost Happy Endings' share an aesthetic kinship. Each is an ingeniously stylised piece of storytelling delivered via a blend of voice-over narrative, assured characterisation and expansive movement, all of which are abetted by splendidly economical design and lush, sometimes mischievous musical scores by Lorent's offstage collaborators.
The company's current revival of 'Snow White', a show originally created in 2015, is an absorbing and seductively entertaining example of Lorent's brand of popular art-making for all ages. Focused on a complex mother-daugher relationship, and pinned to themes of internal and external beauty, innocence versus corruption and the redemptive force of love and forgiveness, this is fairy tale transformed into physicalised food for thought.
Lorent's cast is composed of professional dancers supplemented by members of the company's youth academy. She and they take their cues from a familiar plot suggestively retold by the poet and playwright Carol Ann Duffy. The latter's text, smoothly unspooled on the soundtrack by purring-voiced Lindsay Duncan, is the springboard for a staging full of clever and intelligent touches as well as unexpected depths.
In the opening scenes the queen (a remarkably expressive, poignant performance by company veteran Caroline Reece) is the somewhat ominously doll-cradling, lightly amorous spouse of a king (Geoff Hopson) who will, alas, not live to see the child they conceive. Events unfold neatly upon and around Phil Eddolls' anchoring set-piece, a multi-level vanity table topped by a curtained platform that functions like a small stage. Snow White emerges, delightfully, from drawers on either side of the table and in two ages: first, briefly, as a little girl (the charming Natalia Moisa) and then a restless, raven-haired young adult (Virginia Scudeletti, high-spirited and sensitive). She is literally the apple of her initially doting, playful and decidedly privileged mum's eye.
So what goes wrong? Quite a lot, of course. Grown-ups, after all, don't always do the right thing.
One of the most valuable attributes of Lorent's work is how above board she is about showing adult expressions of feeling, whether that manifests as affectionate intimacy, brooding depression or tormented rage. This range of emotional honesty is often the bedrock of her most affecting narratives, and here it imbues 'Snow White' with uncommon dramatic weight and scope.
The queen's mirror is more than just a truth-telling prop to which the loaded question 'Who is the fairest one of all?' can be handily addressed. Embodied by the wonderfully supple Aisha Naamani, clad in shimmering silver from head to toe, the mirror is a troubling reflection of the queen's monstrous, anti-maternal frailties and flaws. This royal single parent is both vain and insecure, afraid of ageing, jealous of her daughter's beaming, unspoilt youth and harbouring a dangerously selfish need to be desired.
Lorent, again to her credit, never shies away from the tale's intoxicatingly dark aspects. Consider how she handles the sacrificial killing of a doe (played, beautifully, by one of the child dancers Ruby Gregory) by the queen's hunstman (the ever-reliable Gavin Coward). After removing the quivering animal's heart he dutifully serves it to his mistress as it it were her daughter's own organ. This saviour's act of destruction and deception is shocking and terrible to witness, but absolutely valid in showing how far gone the queen is.
Rest assured, however, that Lorent understands contrasts. 'Snow White' is marked by both light and shade. There are moments of liveliness, whimsicality and compassion.
Early on, as the king and queen gently canoodle upon the vanity table, an ensemble of adults and children gambol about. We know it is winter as they're lobbing snowballs and pulling small sleighs. Come spring, to mark the arrival of a swaddled baby princess, the swirling ensemble returns with flowers and kites. So far so happy. But then, a little later, as the queen and her now-pubescent daughter indulge in their daily ablutions to one side of the stage, we watch and are told about the 'band of stunted miners' (aka the dwarfs, although that word is never used here) whose hard, dirty work underground allows the rich household above them to tick along nicely.
This dash of political content is slipped into the narrative as a fact, without fuss. But then almost nothing about Lorent's production is laboured. Well, maybe the procession of mourning after the king's untimely and unseen demise, which feels unearned and slightly false. But such a tonal lapse is rare.
There is, on the other hand, so much to draw viewers in and keep us engaged, starting with Eddolls' cunning, free-standing revolving set or the uncloyingly sweet use of child performers as animals of the forest. I loved the jolly, rough and rude capering of the miners and Snow White at home, accompanied by a jolly instrumental from composer Murray Gold that seems worthy of an Emir Kusturica film. Snow White has a short solo at the top of that second act that neatly expresses how tumblingly bereft she feels. The wild, twisted horror of the queen and the mirror twirling their skirts leads to a dance, drenched in red and blue light, that plays out like an internal battle of ecstasy, guilt and remorse. Likewise notable is the largeness of the poison apple, or when the miners are so flummoxed by the comatose Snow White that they resort to standing on their heads. This is taken further by the huntsman's loving manhandling of her, hauling her floppy body around as if he were Romeo trying to revive Julie (actions set by Gold to a haunting, Morricone-like soprano).
The richness of Lorent's vision of 'Snow White' is sustained. At the close, the benumbed queen becomes a still and presumably penitent centrepoint as everyone else cavorts around her in conga lines and ring-a-ring o' roses. There follows a coda, a note of foreboding struck by the return of the once-discarded doll as a cautionary reminder of the temptation of too much self-regard.
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), ertswhile curator, occasional dramaturg or mentor and annual PR (for Taiwan Season showcase at Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Photograph: The Twins
Snow White is on tour in Spring 2025 to - Hull, Sadlers East, Derby, Worthing, Darlington and Doncaster – tickets are on sale now.
