Manon

Aside

It’s the same old story: beautiful girl – no better than she should be with a brother as a pimp, falls in love with a penniless student and - motivated by greed, becomes a rich man’s mistress. We know it will all end in tears and it does. The student is persuaded to cheat at cards, is denounced by the rich man who shoots the brother and discards Manon. As an illegal prostitute she is deported to New Orleans, is raped by the Gaoler and, overcome by the heat, anxiety and the journey, dies in a Louisianan swamp in the arms of her lover.

I had always imagined Manon as an experienced courtesan so was flummoxed when she first appeared as a pure, innocent young girl. Still - within a trice she was in bed with the student and before you could say sugar daddy she was seduced by a fur coat and jewels and had swanned off with the rich man.

In act 2 there is a very funny pas de deux with the brother Lescaut who is drunk as a skunk, and then poor Manon suffered a costume malfunction. Her dress of many layered gauzy skirts dropped one, which trailed interminably round her exquisite feet. It was so moving to see her handed from one powdered, bewigged male to another, with such gentleness and care, to protect her from tripping over the dread trailing skirt - I didn’t breathe until she slipped into the wings and returned almost instantly minus the offending layer. One imagines heads will roll in the costume department.

The ballet is by the late Kenneth Macmillan and the haunting music by Massenet. It was a very large orchestra – seats had been taken from the auditorium to make space and they were superb.

The sets were simple but effective; in the second act there was a fug effect suggesting cigar and cigarette smoke so real you could almost smell it. It seemed to be done with lighting. The swamp mist in the third made me wonder if dry ice had been used. Whatever – it worked. The English National Ballet is a bit of a misnomer as only one member of the cast had an English name but then the great Alicia Markova was really Lillian Alicia Marks and the divine Margot Fonteyn was Peggy Hookham.

The ballet was at the Bristol Hippodrome and we found a coffee place close by, to tackle the cross word until it was time for lunch in an Italian restaurant near the theatre. We didn’t want long trails in the uncertain weather. The restaurant was full of children (half term?) and students and we couldn’t believe the amount of times some of them went up for seconds – which they were allowed - MTL noticed with awe that one boy took hi plate up seven times. It was a most popular place.

The amazing photographs are uncredited – I couldn’t find any names.

Programme designers please note small print on red paper is virtually unreadable