Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 48

C4 The Edmonton Journal, Thursday, October 5, 1989 Tntoearitir ffoir sidloltescoBiits mily Flavor of mildewed jokes in The Hand That Cradles The Rock La Ronde highlights" National Ballet show SUSAN HICKMAN CM REVIEW National Ballet of Canada Jubilee Auditorium Tonight, 8 p.m. IF YOU GO. The Hand That Cradles The Rock Walterdale Theatre Directed by James Vosper Featuring Art Van Loo, Karen Hansen, Carol Stanley, Jim Shepard and Eva Marie Clarke through Oct. 14 I Jfr'A i If ML I. I .1 -Sam Edmonton There's a buzz in the air when the National Ballet of Canada comes to town and Wednesday night's performance of a mixed program at the Jubilee by Canada's largest ballet company was predictably applauded with enthusiasm by an 80-per-eent house.

Although not a program recommended for the very young (and there was quite a handful of tiny balletomanes in the audience, some asleep in their mothers' arms), the National's presentation of three very different ballets offered a palatable mix of the truly classical and the experimental contemporary with a festive ethnic touch. The opener was the traditional second act of La Bayadere, as staged for the National Ballet in 1984 by Natalia Makarova after the choreograpy of Marius Petipa. La Bayadere's second act, or The Kingdom of the Shades, features the brave warrior Solor, grief-stricken over the death of the beautiful temple dancer, Nikiya. Under the influence of opium, Solor dreams of being reunited with Nikiya. Kingdom of the Shades demands a high standard of technical virtuosity from the corps de ballet whose ensemble dancing throughout the scene can mesmerize if performed in unison.

Eighteen dancers in classical white tutus and veils of cloth looped from forehead to fingertip, startlingly dramatic against a matte-black backdrop, left a breathless aura of unearthliness as they entered the stage on a long ramp. Unfortunately, the unison wasn't there for the remainder of the scene and every faltering step or unst retched leg managed only to detract from the performance. Soloists Chan Hon Goh, Pamela Place and Susan Dromisky didn't fare much better. Serge Lavoie lacked the natural image of the stalwart Solor. He was but a powerless, concentrated figure, even if he was technically efficient.

It was Gi.ella Witkowsky who finally brought a spark to the stage with her splendidly buoyant portrait of a gay and innocent Nikiya. Glen Tet ley's La Ronde was the highlight of the evening. Tetley's second creation for the National PI FAF-RphvHp ThoT premiered in Toronto two years ago. La Ronde is a dance adaptation of Viennese writer Arthur Schnitzler's play about the shallowness and frailty of human relationships. Challenging to the dancers and audience alike, La Ronde wove a group of ten dancers into and out of each other's arms with dramatic intensity, drawing from the company the most expressive performances of the evening.

The original story on which La Ronde is based, Reigen, was published in 1903. The play was scandalous in German-speaking theatres, offending the bourgeois society of the day with its implied casual sexual encounters. Tetley's work, imaginatively accompanied by the unyielding Sinfonietta in major, op. 5, by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, reproduces Schnitzler's couplings in 10 successive pas de deux, each with its own mood. Draped in layers of chiffon to flirt and toy with The Poet (Owen Montague), Karen Kain brought a touch of sarcastic humor to the scene of seduction and two-faced portrayals of character as The Actress.

Raymond Smith, as The Count, was a haughty match and their partnering was magnificent. Other standouts Wednesday were John Alleyne, whose fluid strenth was a powerful Soldier, Rex Harrington as the sensual and convincing Young Gentleman and Martine Lamy as the dramatic and alluring Young Wife. Deadline pressures prevented me from seeing the National's presentation of Napoli, Act 3, a production by Peter Schaufuss, after August Bournonville. Bournonville attempted to recapture the flavor of Napoli and its inhabitants as he perceived them 150 years ago by incorporating the folk dances he had seen and learned in Italy with the classical French style of ballet. Karen Kain and Raymond Smith as Teresina and Gennaro are scheduled to dance the festive and colorful final act of this ballet tonight.

thiQ nnor 1 I LIZ NICHOLLS Journal Staff Writer Edmonton The Walterdale season-opener is one of those plays you wonder later if you only dreamed you saw. A husband at home sticking a bottle into an infant; a wife out on an expense account lassoeing the corporate buck and bringing home the bacon. Good God, talk about drumming your stilletos on the received verities. But soft. There's more.

The guy's mother-in-law Beattie smacks her choppers like a tiger who's been promised a poodle over her daughter's potential indiscretions in the corporate jungle. Beattie's idea of a breezy exchange is to hand her boyfriend George a sandwich, after several minutes of badinage on who should construct same, and remark, "you can take it to your basket, or eat with us." So those of you not entirely stupefied by a life in front of the box will glean that the idea of the male oppressed by your new-fangled notions (1-i-b, but shhh, not in front of the children) is approached from several radical perspectives in The Hand That Cradles The Rock. Later, of course, all this nonsense about women getting out of hand is sorted out in a set of interlocking dream and reality sequences in which Ross, the surrogate mother (you feel you're on a first name basis nearly at once with these people), hoovers down entirely too much brandy with a straight-laced visiting district nurse (did I mention her name is Miss Bricker?) who's afraid she might have frostbite and who has written a romantic novel. The next morning, it's quite the little domestic scene, let me tell you. Neither Ross nor Miss Bricker (Carolyn) can recall whether they DID IT.

The incriminating evidence is at hand: it's Beattie, I seem to recall, who peruses Miss Bricker's discarded bra and describes it hilariously as a slingshot for grapefruits, or words to that effect. The question of whether or not they DID IT is a subject on every- Greg Southam The Journal Bricker in The Hand that Cradles pressive conviction as Ross. It is no slur on his abilities to report that he's defeated by vacuum a-pron humor. And then, forced into the seducing-man mode by a script that delivers a district nurse with hypothermia into his hands, he struggles valiantly but in vain with stage inebriation and lechery. Karen Hansen strikes a single note (corporate froideur) for all she's worth as Alex.

Carol Stanley as Beattie can't make much sense of a toughie who's wisecracking about orgies one minute and roused to panic the next about an invisible killer upon clapping eyes on a fallen pair of knickers. Jim Shepard manages the milque-toast features of George with some deadpan drol-lerie. When the script gets irredeemably preposterous, so does he. Only Eva Marie Clarke as Miss Bricker approaches any thing like natural grace under trying circumstances. She has the sort of ingenuous charm that makes it possible to deliver lines about stars bursting in the depths of her womanhood, or telling people to get in the bedrqom and take their clothes off.

Katherine Ball's set, a chic green and pinkish interior, is lovely. I studied it in detail. "Meanwhile, back at the diaper bucket Eva Marie Clarke portrays Carolyn its distinctive flavor; it's that the script carries on as if they weren't. And it makes The Hand a show for consenting adolescents. The best moments occur when Graves sets up a gag and inserts it, for reasons that have nothing whatever to do with the fortunes of Ross, Alex, Beattie and George.

Hence, Ross says "brandy helps me with cooking; I cook better with a couple of brandies." Or the dessicated George is moved, for reasons that remain buried with the script, to add to discussions of a northern airline called Snow Goose that "snow goose is good goose." To a formal orgy, says Beattie, you wear "white gloves and Crisco oil." But this calibre of wit is not sustained. And besides, the cast attacks jokes with a certain desperation, however understandable, that plum knocks the wind out of them. "Shall I be MOTHER?" asks Ross, pouring the coffee. "We'll manage." says Beattie grimly. There has got to be a way to deliver the double-entendres of Graves's script nothing is impossible, as Peter Pan once reminded us but the game amateur cast of James Vosper's production hasn't found it.

Art Van Loo is normally an engaging comic actor. And he turns in a performance of im Art van Loo is Ross Cameron and the Rock at Walterdale Theatre one's mind. Did I mention that George and Beattie have not gone to Saskatoon as originally planned? Have I omitted to divulge that Alex whose name, incidentally, suggests to us paid interpreters the ambivalence about male and female roles that echoes so hauntingly throughout the work has also returned suddenly from Yellowknife? Did I fail to mention that one of the characters in this play is a virgin? Lordie, what a pickle. In fairness to you the reader, I am tight-lipped on the clever twists by which it is demonstrated that a little jealousy will do wonders to melt icicle exec women and get them back in the sack, and that brassy mothers-in-law really want a man to wear the pants. In short, if the sight of a man in an apron reduces you to paroxysms of helpless laughter, I've got a play for you.

And if, additionally, the concept of a man dancing with a vacuum cleaner and saying "us girls" takes a hold of your funnybone and ill not let go, struggle with yourself no longer: go. The hand that ladled this crock is Warren Graves. The sound you hear is the barrel being scraped. And the reason that it opens the season at Edmonton's venerable community theatre is anybody's guess. It's not so much that the jokes are mildewed that gives the show 'E THE Edmonton Journal i ITED COMPACT DISC, DIDW'T STOP THERE..