As the rain comes down and the nights draw in, Birmingham Royal Ballet is offering the salve of the sunniest ballet in the repertory – a shot of warmth to carry its audiences into autumn. Frederick Ashton’s ballet has been performed by the company since 1962, just two years after its premiere. And the current artistic director Carlos Acosta was a fine latter-day Colas, the young farmer whose adoration of the badly guarded Lise provides the motor for this bucolic love story. All of which may explain the loving attention to detail that has gone into this blissful revival.
It does the ballet the great tribute of understanding that if you take care of the steps – of the dancing hens who shake their feathered arms as they wake at dawn, of the young lovers throwing ribbons across the stage as they trace the filigree of their love, or the clumsy suitor more in love with his red umbrella than any girl – then the tenderness and humour will effortlessly emerge.
