Advertisement

Nudity, vengeance and death by peanut butter: dance-drama Ruination is a gleeful anti-Nutcracker

Hannah Shepherd-Hulford (centre) as Medea in Ruination at the Linbury Theatre - Alastair Muir
Hannah Shepherd-Hulford (centre) as Medea in Ruination at the Linbury Theatre - Alastair Muir

For all that Christmas revolves around a birth, many of the tales we associate with it are operatically deathly. From Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents (and the nightmarish 16th-century Coventry Carol, which it inspired) to Andersen’s The Little Match Girl to The Snowman, mortality is all around.

You could argue, then, that although superior British dance-theatre troupe Lost Dog’s retelling of the myth of Medea is being presented as a gleefully unseasonal confection, the tale of a woman who helps a warrior steal a Golden Fleece and then apparently murders their two children when he dumps her is in fact as festive as a mince pie. But let’s not be too contrary – if you’re after an antidote to the current seasonal John Lewis ad, this remarkable new confection is it.

Ruination is performed in the subterranean Linbury Theatre, and the fact that the Royal Ballet’s snow-dusted Nutcracker is on offer upstairs on the main stage is drolly exploited. This, as Jean-Daniel Broussé’s enjoyably arch Hades points out, is an anti-Nutcracker, as protean as the Tchaikovsky classic is predictable. And be warned that there is nothing snowflakey about its 14+ age recommendation. Take a four-year-old to this and they might never sing Little Donkey again.

One hundred interval-free minutes long (too long; more pace and momentum would help) and performed by a cast of six cracking dancer-actors, it’s the ingeniously choreographed creation of Lost Dog supremo Ben Duke, a smart, witty, original artist who looks like a Spanish film star. We are in a kind of underworld kangaroo court-cum-anteroom presided over by Hades and Persephone, with Medea on trial, Jason testifying and we, the audience, the nominal jury: is she really a killer? (Also involved are Medea’s father, King Aeetes, and Jason’s new squeeze, Glauca.) The action takes place on a stripped-back stage and with few props, but with a decidedly atmospheric gateway to the underworld proper. Also onstage are three excellent musicians, who deliver a sensitively chosen magpie soundtrack ranging from Rachmaninov to Radiohead.

The sense of anything-goes surprise is crucial. So let’s just say that this show playfully (towards the end, very bracingly) recasts the famous myth of female vengeance as a berserk courtroom drama that embraces maternal love, male cravenness and self-delusion, and plenty more besides, playing out on a razor’s edge between humour and horror and giving you heaps to ponder. The cast acquit themselves superbly, with Maya Carroll first among equals as a dancer, but Hannah Shepherd’s Medea shattering in her climactic speech.

I’ll add only that there’s also a fair bit of male nudity, an accidental death-by-peanut-butter, and a mad scene that will send shivers down your spine. More turkey, anyone?


Until Dec 31. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk