Composer: Gus Nicholson
Choreographer: Jenna Lee
The charity London Children’s Ballet not only provides ballet training for children from a wide range of backgrounds, but that training culminates in the performance of a full-length ballet commissioned by LCB from young composers and choreographers.
Anne of Green Gables is composer Gus Nicholson’s first ballet, but it is an accomplished debut. L M Montgomery’s children’s story is set in a remote Nova Scotia town at the end of the 19th century, and Nicholson provides a lushly pastoral richness befitting the country setting.
Choreographer Jenna Lee, returning to LCB after choreographing Snow White in 2015 andLittle Lord Fauntleroy the following year, grasps the requirements of the show’s large ensemble from the off. Opening the action at the railway station of Avonlea, Lee differentiates deftly between children and adults, station workers and passengers, especially important when all parts are played by under-18s.
Annalise Wainwright-Jones is in effervescent form as the red-headed, occasionally tempestuous Anne Shirley. Her ebullience contrasts nicely with Freddie Lovell’s Matthew Cuthbert, Lee giving Lovell a shakier, more reserved gait that gradually loosens up as Anne’s infectious enthusiasm softens his heart.
Indeed, throughout Lee uses choreographic style to reveal elements of her characters’ personalities. While Alice Stallion’s Marilla, Matthew’s sister and Anne’s eventual adoptive mother, carries herself with the same sort of flowing movement as Anne, interfering neighbour Rachel Lynde (Kitty Cox-Harrison) is far more angular, the character’s spikiness reflected in folded joints and staccato movements. The same approach is given to Rachel’s fellow two busybodies and, later, to the snootier girls in Anne’s school class: the archetype becomes easily recognisable.
One of the great strengths is the clarity of storytelling, not only through dance but with limited elements of mime and facial expressions that demonstrate how this young cast are being taught to inhabit their characters in ways that many a professional ballet neglects. It all adds to a cohesive narrative that does Montgomery’s classic work justice.
One slight dampener is that after the opening half of Act I, in which the action flows naturally from scene to scene, many subsequent scene transitions lose that sense of fluidity, presenting more a series of tableaux than the fluid narrative those opening scenes promised. Matters aren’t helped by long scenes in Act II set in the schoolroom that contain much less engaging storytelling than the rest of the piece.
Those scenes do, though, introduce Fyfe Skinner’s Gilbert – antagonist and would-be friend to Anne – who brings with him a warmth to match Wainwright-Jones’s. And while much of Anne’s story seems to involve the lowest of stakes, the closing moments do a good job of portraying the tragedy which overshadows the closing chapters of Montgomery’s novel.
Anne of Green Gables has been adapted many times in radio, TV, film and several stage musicals. In this new form, LCB demonstrates that ballet is a worthy medium in which to tell this timeless children’s classic.
Reviewed on 27 May 2022