Sleeping Beauty

There is a post I've not yet finished about reaching financial goals.  It's a difficult one to write but I'll get there eventually.  In any case, I am slowly coming to the point of 'spending out', having reached a particular goal.  Aside from travel, I've held myself in relatively tight rein since retiring four years ago and now I'm considering things on which I would quite enjoy spending money. 

One of them was this very occasional opportunity of seeing a ballet.  Bill wasn't fussed about seeing the Scottish Ballet perform Sleeping Beauty.  He found another dance company he wouldn't mind seeing and I bought tickets for that instead.  However, I came to realise (it was the purple velvet in the advert above and reading about the costumes) that I'd given in to him when I still really wanted to see that ballet. 

The picture on the screen looks down Grey Street with the Theatre Royal on the left.

 The only ballets that normally come to Newcastle are The Nutcracker and Swan Lake and I've seen them plenty, thank you (I've actually danced to the music of Swan Lake, though I have NO talent whatsoever).  Bill and I once saw the Northern Ballet company do Dracula and it was so stunning it pretty much had a cult following.  We'd also seen a Russian ballet that was well danced, but the poverty of the troupe was evident:  the costumes weren't well matched, the sound system played a tinny recording, the male lead was (I kid you not, he had belly) built like a ballet-dancing truck driver.  One had to feel for them.



I had an idea and I almost left it too late, but providence was with us.  When on our day out (Monday) Vivien and I stopped for a cup of tea I floated the question of whether she might like to go to the ballet with me.  I knew that like me, she'd taken ballet lessons as a child.  Haste doesn't begin to describe her reaction as we made a bee-line for the box office at the Theatre Royal.  As it happened, there were only two seats available at the Thursday matinee (my preferred time) and they were in the centre of the back row of the Grand Circle (about as good as you could want).    They had just been returned.  We snapped them up!




Vivien was fizzing with excitement and so was I!  We couldn't wait to tell our respective partners the news.  She, having read the fine print, later emailed me to point out that our tickets would cover our Metro travel into town for two hours pre- and post-performance, so we met for lunch and had a coffee after.

The Theatre Royal, Newcastle upon Tyne

It was beautiful and perfect.  I brought binoculars and looked through them once.  The costumes were just as dazzling and luscious up close as one might hope, but I couldn't follow the story, so I put the binocs away.  The dancers started out in long Victorian looking gowns, top coats and tails in the beginning, but in the latter half the ladies switched to sort of 1940's cocktail dresses for the wedding scene, and the set included a rather art deco light suspended (or was it a lighting effect?) from the ceiling.  The faeries were decked out in feathered skirts.  The evil faery's bodice looked nearly as though she was topless and her two henchfaeries had Martian-like heads. 

About half way down Grey Street.

We were introduced to the Prince on a hunt in the forest.  He was wearing a purple (the colour of royalty) and green (associated with the country and upper classes) plaid velvet tail coat with green socks that imitated green Wellington's (I'm given to understand that black Wellies are working class).  In any case, only the upper classes hunt (well, they did before it was banned).  He did a rather odd dance I thought with the (male) Blue Bird (with blue hair) who showed him Sleeping Beauty's castle, but never mind.  Maybe the bird had to drag him towards the castle?  The dance just after The Kiss, when she wore a lovely knee-length floaty gown was completely exquisite.

Theatre Royal at night

I loved that the cast was so large, we counted about 34, half men.  I loved that all the toe shoes matched the dresses:  black, red, green, turquoise, mustard, lavender you name it (I only ever had pale pink shoes; it won't surprise you at all to read that I still have them).  I loved that there was an orchestra tucked under the stage playing Tchaikovsky's score.  I loved that they could do the hand-holding turns (my ballet terms are long forgotten) in spite of the large disc of a hat worn by the 'mother of the bride'.  I loved it that the father of Sleeping Beauty was a black man and that at least two of the other dancers were Asian.  I loved that they all seemed to have parts (perhaps even lines) when they weren't dancing, as they clearly stayed in character and formed an important part of the scenery.  I loved it that Vivien sat in a chair donated by Lady Irving and I turned out to have the one labelled Sir Miles Irving.  We both loved the lush red velvet and gold braid, ivory walls and and sweet cherubs of the newly refurbished Theatre (for its 175th birthday this year).  Sadly, most of my inside photos are rubbish.  However, I found a couple of external snaps of the Theatre Royal and Grey Street (as pictured on the stage screen) that I took in 2009.  

Grey Street at night.

If you hurry, you might be able to watch a trailer of Sleeping Beauty.

Do you love the ballet?