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Zara Dakin as Dietrich |
Looks apart, this trio of divas are fur real!
DIVAS
Apollo Theatre
CHOREOGRAPHER Peter Schaufuss calls this entertainment a “dancical”.
In creating it he has been inspired by the songs, lyrics and personalities of three great female performers: Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland.
He uses his classically trained company to make an enjoyable evening of dance that will appeal not just to balletomanes but to any dance enthusiast and fans of those great singers.
Using their own recordings of about 10 of each Diva’s songs he does not try to dramatise the story of the lyrics but reflects the atmosphere of the music and each diva’s personality.
Tall, strong-limbed Caroline Petter is very different from tiny Piaf, her large eloquent hands the opposite of the arthritic claws of the “Sparrow”, but those extremities are amazingly expressive in an opening number that hides the rest of her behind a chair.
The chair later becomes her partner, an expression of the longing and loss that Piaf expresses in imaginative choreographed solos. Irina Kolesnikova is Garland, partnered always by Stefan Wise, and Zara Dakin is Dietrich, making her entrance as in a dazzling diamante-covered dress and white fur coat.
But this is not just about soloists – the whole company have their individual moments or sweep across the stage in lively numbers.
Simply but very stylishly staged against a light wall that can show us the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate, the bombed ruins of Dresden or a skyscraper skyline, it is gorgeously and wittily dressed, and Schaufuss is responsible for every bit of the show including costumes and lighting.
Sometimes dramatic, as in an animated duo to Hymne a l’amour, often amusing and sometimes very witty, the choreography is delightfully inventive and especially effective in the Dietrich segment with a camp send-up of the Nazis – a lively number with girls in lederhosen, steel-helmetted soldiers in the smoke of battle and a moving interpretation of Where Have All The Flowers Gone? that includes a lad from the Hitler Youth mourning the lost promises by which they had been deluded as well as the dead victims of war.
It is this mixture of human feeling, humour and pathos – and showmanship – that both links these singers and makes this an evening to enjoy.
Until July 5 |
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