It makes complete sense that Wayne McGregor would be attracted to Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, the story of a scientist who engineers a perfect race of people. McGregor’s own choreography so often seems an attempt to transcend the limitations of the body, embracing technology, streamlining the messiness of fallible humans. To stage Atwood’s complex world is a colossal challenge, but McGregor revels in a big vision. He has made a ballet that’s epic, ambitious, flawed, in parts inspired, in others wanting, often beautiful and not for a moment boring.
MaddAddam was premiered by National Ballet of Canada in 2022 to mixed reviews, and it has had some tweaks for this European premiere by the Royal Ballet, including a voiceover by Tilda Swinton (McGregor’s never less than high-end when it comes to collaborators), which goes some way to quelling narrative confusion. McGregor (with dramaturg Uzma Hameed) is never interested in just rehashing a story across three acts. The source material is a prompt, a proposition to bounce off, although there’s plenty of Atwood’s prescient books (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam) in here.
The first act finds Snowman, AKA Jimmy (Joseph Sissens) up a tree, after a global pandemic-fuelled apocalypse, which has been bioengineered by his best friend, Crake (William Bracewell in black-clad tech guru mode), in parallel with the creation of a new, more innocent race, the Crakers. Past and present blur. Another survivor, Toby (Melissa Hamilton) duets with a distant, now unreachable lover (Lukas B Brændsrød) and rocks some of designer Gareth Pugh’s eclectic postapocalyptic fashion: a dusky pink jumpsuit and a rifle. Ravi Deepres’ projections bring startling visions, imagined and all too real.
The second act rewinds and fast-forwards, presenting character after character – including the gene-spliced hybrid creatures pigoons – more of a roll call than an exploration, and misses some potential dramatic crunch points. The final act projects itself beyond the books into a speculative future and the mythmaking of the next generation, some of this cleverly done. It’s a lot to digest in real time.
What is never in doubt is that the dancers are incredible. McGregor has had a long relationship with this company, and movement that once could have seemed awkward or extreme, is now utterly natural in their bodies. Sissens thrives in the loose-limbed, ranging imagination of his choreography, the most human character and the most multiplicitous in his movement. There is a well-drawn trio for Jimmy, Crake and Oryx (Fumi Kaneko) that illustrates the changing calibration in the triangle of love, trust and need between the three of them. At this stage the romantic sweep of Max Richter’s score becomes exultant, as if the trio are caught up in their own hubris. There is exciting dancing from the men in the second act when the music turns to juddering electronics and the dance to ultrafast chaîné turns and rocketing leaps.
This is a ballet that is trying to do so much. You applaud its wild aspiration, it enthrals in the moment, but it leaves a flicker of unfulfillment, because its creators are only human after all. Buckle up for the ride and revel in the dancing of these impeccably engineered bodies.
• At Royal Opera House, London, until 30 November
