ENB's Sleeping Beauty, Liverpool Empire Theatre _320
DESPITE the inevitable happy ending, this interpretation of the traditional fairy tale owes more to the sinister imaginations of the Brothers Grimm than the cheery Disney version.
This is the 84th time English National Ballet has performed the production, choreographed by Kenneth Macmillan, but it has lost none of its lustre.
The backdrop vies with the dancers for attention in a set that so resembles a Victorian children’s cardboard theatre that you half expect an enormous chubby hand to pop down and adjust one of the figures.
Macmillan drew on Marius Pepita’s original 1890 staging of Tchaikovsky’s ballet, balancing the uncomplicated plot with a series of tableaux so that many of the most remarkable moments were almost incidental to the storyline.
The fight between good and evil – as the Lilac Fairy (an unruffled Sarah McIlroy) works to undo Carabosse’s malevolent curse – is kept central to the story.
Andre Portasio’s wicked fairy has crept out of a ghastly nightmare – his face like a porcelain mask and his juddering motion resembling a marionette on strings.
But there are plenty of joyful episodes, too – villagers weaving in and out of floral hoops against a pastoral backdrop for Princess Aurora’s 16th birthday, and knitting women, narrowly saved from execution for bringing needles into the kingdom, winning a laugh from the audience.
And there is an entire 40-or-so minutes of celebration once Aurora (Elena Glurdjidze) has been woken by a kiss from her handsome prince.
This scene is a chance for the cast of 67 dancers to prove that a century of dozing has not caused any muscle wastage as courtiers dressed as characters from other fairy tales take their turn centre stage.
Puss in Boots and the White Cat are convincingly feline in their movements, while the Blue Bird practically flies through the air.
But, with her girlish capering giving way to an exhilarating pas de deux in the final act, the innocent princess doomed to prick her finger on a needle and fall into a 100-year sleep remains the star of the show.
