Review – Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Peacock Theatre, London, 10th and 15th September 2022

Posted on September 16, 2022 by therealchrisparkle

There was a time, somewhere in the lonely misery of Lockdown 1.0, when we wondered if we would ever see the Trocks again. Everything else was cancelled due to Covid – how would it ever be safe to venture out again? But here we are, just four short (or maybe long) years since their last visit, and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo have returned to our shores for a two week stint at the Peacock Theatre, with two different programmes, followed by a UK tour.

How sad it was, then, that their return should coincide with the death of Her Majesty the Queen, which knocked the stuffing out of us as a nation. We saw Programme A on the matinee of 10^th September, when we were all still coming to terms with her death. The usual hilarious announcement that begins each Trocks show that there will be changes to the advertised programme, largely due to the mission of mercy by esteemed dancer Natasha Notgoodenuff, to rescue a production at Le Grand Theatre de Ballet de Croydon (or somewhere equally unlikely) was missing, and was instead replaced by a two minutes silence plus standing for the national anthem.

Whilst this was completely in keeping with the mourning period, and was scrupulously observed by everyone, it was not the perfect way to start a programme of comic dance. Normally, we would be instantly laughing as an unfit von Rothbart started scampering around the stage at the beginning of the Trocks’ incomparable take on Swan Lake Act II. We’ve seen this wonderful piece of nonsense at least a dozen times and it never failed to make us laugh till we ached – until this time. It’s still wonderful and always will be; but the sadness of the day wasn’t in keeping with the pratfalls on display, and it took a long time for us all to loosen up. It did, however, allow us to witness a brand new Trock star in the diminutive but oh so powerful form of Takaomi Yoshino, who, as Varvara Laptopova, performed the most extraordinary jetés and fouettés, gaining amazing height and completely made you forget you were watching a comedy performance.

Without a pre-show announcement, we didn’t know if there were any changes of cast or what the surprise Pas de Deux would be. Actually, it turned out to be a Pas de Trois, from Swan Lake Act I, with two majestically tall ballerinas accompanied by a teeny tiny male dancer doing his best to support them – and in the end, they gave up and hoisted him overhead in a hilarious about-turn from the usual gender roles. We then moved on to Nightcrawlers, a surprisingly stylish and slick parody of Jerome Robbins’ In The Night, with couples mixing and matching, unexpected rapid cross-stage exits and entrances, and a lot of fun to boot. It was Robert Carter’s magnificent creation Olga Supphozova who executed the Dying Swan in the age old tradition, and we finally enjoyed the ludicrously charming Walpurgisnacht, the stage littered with delightfully silly fauns, a powerful coupling between Minnie Van Driver and Jacques D’Aniels, and a scene-stealing Pan by Boris Dumbkopf (that brilliant Takaomi Yoshino again).

We returned for Programme B on the evening of 15^th September. It’s amazing what a few days can do for public spirit. No pre-show silence, but a return to the announcement of changes – and the fact that Natasha Notgoodenuff’s errand of mercy had taken her to Les Grands Ballets Imperiales de Slough. It’s funny how rattling off a few faux Russian names and the news that the ballerinas are all in a very very good mood this evening can really help the show start off on the right foot. We kicked off (indeed, it all kicked off) with Les Sylphides, an excellent example of the Trocks doing their trademark perfect combination of comedy riffs with superb classical ballet. Olga Supphozova took every opportunity to milk the show for comedy value, but there were some terrific solos too. Dmitri Legupski didn’t sober up the whole time.

Again we enjoyed a Pas de Trois, this time from Paquita, with some genuinely brilliant dancing from Helen Highwaters (who I think should be now be made a Dame), Elvira Khababgallina (I think) and William Vanilla. The Trocks at their very best. Then came the slightly more subdued Vivaldi Suite, followed by La Supphozova dealing with the terminal fowl again, and finally Majisimas, a delightful mix of mock-flamenco and Spanish bravura with the usual comedy/classic combo.

I’m going to be controversial here. (Gasp!) I’ve checked back, and this is the 15^th (and 16^th) times that we’ve seen the Trocks since we discovered them in 1998. Their unique selling point has always been that combination of comedy and classical ballet perfection. However, for the first time, there were a few moments when the dancing, primarily from those dancers in a more corps de ballet role, wasn’t quite a perfect as usual. No names, no pack drill. But some of those leaps didn’t land properly and some of the usual elegance was missing. Don’t get me wrong – they’re still brilliant, and we will still see them again for a 17^th time (and more!) It’s just that when you expect perfection and it’s not entirely there, it comes as a bit of a surprise.

Do catch them on their UK tour though – Canterbury, Brighton, Norwich, Nottingham, Buxton, Hull, Bradford, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Truro and Belfast, between 19^th September and 29^th October. Keep on Trockin’!

Four They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Review – Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, aka The Trocks, Programme 2, Peacock Theatre, 26th September 2015

Posted on September 28, 2015 by therealchrisparkle

You can’t have enough of the Trocks, so hot on the pointe heels of last week’s show, we returned on Saturday to see their second programme, much of which will form their touring show which lasts from 6th October till 11th November. Unusually for the great traditions of Russian ballet, there was only one chyange to the yadvyertised pryogryamme, with Miss Nadia Doumiafeyva performing the role of Mystery Woman drinking at a table in Don Quixote. As usual Miss Natasha Notgoodenoff was winging her way on a mission of mercy, this time to support the ailing ballerinas at Les Grands Ballets de Croydon; and all of the ballerinas were, once again, in a very good mood that afternoon.

We started off with Les Sylphides, with our prima ballerinas in fine form, strutting their wonderful stuff, occasionally kicking each other over, bumping into each other, running to get into position, and being breathtakingly graceful whilst dealing with their avoirdupois. They were also having to negotiate their way around Sergey Legupski (Giovanni Goffredo) who had clearly taken a mixture of co-codamol and Sovietski Champagnski and was more than a danger to shipping. It’s a very funny piece, but actually what really stood out for me was the extraordinary pointe work throughout – it’s flawless, elegant and amazingly powerful. That’s the Trocks in a nutshell: outrageously hilarious, rivetingly technically brilliant.

After the first interval comes Patterns in Space, and it’s the first time we’ve seen this piece since we first started coming to see the Trocks sometime back in the last century. In a fantastically woven mickey-take of Merce Cunningham, three splendidly earnest Trocks cavort, spin, exercise, leap and do everything else in between, in a totally random and meaningless dance sequence. Meanwhile, two on-stage po-faced musicians provide the backing accompaniment, by, inter alia, popping bubble wrap, rustling paper bags, and playing the National Anthem on the kazoo. Stupid and hilarious, you spend the entire time watching the antics of the demure Miss Lariska Dumbchenko (Raffaele Morra) and the wretched Mr Yuri Smirnov (Robert Carter) cack-handedly creating sounds out of nothing, whilst you totally ignore the brilliant dancing. One to file under The Most Wicked Parodies Ever.

Next comes another real favourite, Go For Barocco. To the urgent, driving rhythms of the Brandenburg Concertos, six stalwart Trocks in sensible black dresses bump and grind their way around the stage in an athletic and funny routine that really fits the music perfectly. At times the music gets so fast that all they can do to keep up is to power-walk across the stage, which always cracks me up. It shows off all their incredible dancing skills whilst constantly injecting it with off-the-wall movements, creating a really rewarding comic ballet.

As always at the Trocks, for a special treat, one of the ballerinas will graciously consent to execute the Dying Swan for us. This time it was the vivacious and outgoing Miss Maria Paranova (Carlos Renedo), who brought out all the frantic concerns and bodily dysfunctions of a watery fowl on her last legs. She milked it for all it was worth, if that’s not too much of a mixed metaphor for you. People who clearly hadn’t seen it before were in tears of laughter. Wonderful stuff.

The programme ends with the (relatively) grandly staged Don Quixote, which we have actually seen performed by the Moscow City Ballet and it’s a perfect piece for the Trocks to lampoon. The stage is filled with an assortment of odd-bods, all of whom display their little Trockisms from time to time, just in case you’d actually forgotten you weren’t at a proper Russian ballet. As the performance develops you end up completely entranced by the pas de deux of Kitri – Miss Yakatarina Verbosovich (Chase Johnsey) and Basil – Vyacheslav Legupski (Paolo Cervellera). Their solos are simply outstanding and left the Peacock theatre audience enraptured for more.

Perfect if you like ballet; perfect if you like to laugh; if you like to combine the two, they can’t be beaten. Their UK tour continues to Newcastle, Southampton, Canterbury, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Inverness, Bradford, Nottingham, Brighton, Salford and Birmingham. What are you waiting for!

Review – Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo aka The Trocks, Programme 1, Peacock Theatre, 20th September 2015

Posted on September 21, 2015 by therealchrisparkle

It’s always a pleasure to welcome the Trocks back to the UK, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in two-and-a-half years, which is way too long. For this UK tour they’re starting at the Peacock Theatre in London with two one-week programmes, then taking in the rest of the country with a touring programme that combines the best of both London shows.

When you anticipate a Trocks performance, it’s the hilarious antics that you really look forward to, but you can never lose sight of the extraordinary dance talent within the company. There were some truly amazing performances in this show, at their best you won’t see better on the stage of the Bolshoi or at Covent Garden. Over the years one acquires an accumulated fondness for one’s favourite Trocks and two of my all-time favourites graced the stage at yesterday’s show; but every new tour gives you an opportunity to look out for new names, and there are plenty whom I can imagine will become firm favourites of the future.

After the usual introduction, and the relief of knowing that all of their ballerinas are in a very good mood this afternoon, we started with their perfect staging of Swan Lake Act II. I have been spoilt by having seen the redoubtable M. Velour Pillaux (the brilliant Paul Ghiselin) take the role of von Rothbart many times, and no one quite captures ludicrous camp scariness and the sense of physical exhaustion all that running around induces quite like him. However, I really enjoyed Vladimir Legupski (Duane Gosa) as von Rothbart, deftly controlling the wayward Odette, victoriously blowing on his sharp-shooter. We’ve seen some great Trock Odettes too, but this was the first time we’d seen Miss Nadia Doumiafeyva (Philip Martin-Nielson) and she is extraordinarily graceful and feminine, whilst remaining ruthless with the inept Benno, a fantastically funny performance by Pepe Dufka (Raffaele Morra). Our Prince was the brilliantly dour Sergey Legupski (Giovanni Goffredo) who had me in stitches from his first “mime conversation” with Odette. He did a brilliant slow walk across the stage routine. Our team of naughty cygnets also gave us a great allegro moderato, and, whilst it’s sometimes hard to identify individual Trocks in a group, I think it was Miss Maria Paranova (Carlos Renedo) who gave a particularly disobedient and impish performance. It’s always great to see how various dancers perform different parts of the dance in different ways, and I think you could watch this dozens of times and still get more out of it. Simply one of the funniest thirty minutes on any stage, anywhere.

Our Pas de Deux was Les Corsaires, and is one of those Trocks pieces where the sheer joy and artistry of the ballet completely eclipses the humour. The two dancers were absolutely brilliant – the immense strength of Araf Legupski (Laszlo Major), and the elegant grace of Miss Alla Snizova (Carlos Hopuy) – make for an amazing coupling, overflowing with pizazz and chutzpah. The Pas de Six, Esmeralda, that followed, doesn’t have a terribly interesting narrative thread – it’s just one miserable woman being unsuccessfully cheered up by four girls and a wet bloke – but, as you would expect, they do it with pure Trocks style. On the face of it, all Nina Immobilashvili (Alberto Pretto) has to do as Esmerelda is to look constantly heartbroken – which she does very well – but her pointe work is out of this world. There is also a cute running gag with supporting artiste Helen Highwaters’ (Duane Gosa) offstage fruit basket. We end the second session with the execution of the Dying Swan – this time it was Miss Eugenia Repelskii who did the deed, with refinement, a delectable sense of loss and tragedy, and severe penniferous alopecia.

Our final treat is the grand staging of Paquita, an elaborate swirling and twirling ballet by Petipa with rousing tunes by Minkus. Our wonderful ballerina was the attitudinal but pinpoint accurate Yakaterina Verbosovich (Chase Johnsey) supported by the magnificently lugubrious and almost embalmed Vyacheslav Legupski (Paolo Cervellera), who nevertheless pays sexual attention to the hairy-chested Lariska Dumbchenko (Rafaella Morra on fine form) whilst La Verbosovich isn’t looking. Embellished with a sequence of immaculately performed variations by six of the ballerinas, it’s a splendid combination of great dancing and wonderfully stupid comedy. The afternoon was wrapped up with the splendidly incongruous Lord of the Dance curtain call, with more smoke on stage than in Nigel Farage’s fantasy pub.

Brilliant fun and amazing dancing. We’ll be back for Programme 2!

Review – Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo a.k.a The Trocks, Birmingham Hippodrome, 2nd February 2013

Posted on February 4, 2013 by therealchrisparkle

It’s always a pleasure to welcome back the Trocks to our shores, and indeed the intervening months between booking the tickets and seeing the show are actively spent in happy anticipation. If you don’t already know, every member of this all-male company of amazing dancers takes on a male and female persona appropriate to the Grand Tradition of Classical Ballet. Get to the theatre early so you have some time to read their biographies in the programme because they are wickedly funny. You can never be quite sure who or what you will see until you hear the pre-show announcement explaining the changes to the programme; along with the reassurance that all the ballerinas are in a very good mood for that performance. Will some of one’s old favourite performers still be strutting their stuff? Will there be some new shining stars in the company? Will they do all their old routines? The answers to those questions – certainly as far as the Saturday matinee in Birmingham were concerned – are yes, yes and no.

We’ve seen the Trocks now probably at least ten times, last time a couple of years ago, and on nearly every one of those occasions the first dance has been Act Two of Swan Lake, which is both one of the funniest and most superbly performed pieces you’re ever likely to see on a stage. This time, however, there was no Swan Lake! It is being performed at a couple of the gigs on their tour, but at Birmingham instead our opening act was Les Sylphides.

Les Sylphides combines the beauty of classical ballet with plenty of opportunities for slapstick. It showcases the dancers’ extraordinary talents but remains extremely funny. From the moment Olga Supphozova (one of my old favourites) strides on stage and demands that she takes over from Lariska Dumbchenko (another of my old favourites), who stomps off in a huff, you know they haven’t lost their ability to mock the art form in a most loving way. Miss Supphozova (the excellent Robert Carter) is on top form as she beefs her way through the routine, causing and side-stepping pratfalls and beguilingly drawing the audience along with her with that coquettish smile. She was matched with superb dancing by Marina Plezegetovstageskaya, which is the first time we’ve seen her, and together they were masterfully accompanied by M. Jacques d’Aniels, in a new reincarnation embodied by Lawrence Neuhauser. His vague, mindless expression is a complete hoot. The other dancers were all superb and the physical comedy of the dance was of the highest order – especially hilarious was the delightfully vacuous Miss Ludmila Beaulemova, a new Trock played by Scott Austin.

Our pas de deux for the matinee was danced by Yakatarina Verbosovich and Kravlji Snepek. Miss Verbosovich (the extraordinary Chase Johnsey) was on stunning form, with a performance of grace and precision that Darcey Bussell would have found hard to match. Mr Snepek (new Trock Philip Martin-Neilson, the youngest member of the company) grew into his performance and I am sure he will be a splendid stalwart of the group in the years to come.

This was followed by La Vivandière, pas de six. I was a little disappointed because I also saw that Le Grand Pas De Quatre is being played at some theatres and that is a real favourite – but this was the first time we had seen La Vivandière. There was no need to be disappointed, as it’s beautifully danced and very funny. The hairy-chested Miss Dumbchenko (the brilliant Raffaele Morra) was back on stage and giving it her all. It was also a great opportunity to see some deft and seemingly effortless (I’m sure it isn’t) solo work by Andrei Leftov (the superb Boysie Dakobe).

A major highlight of any Trocks performance is the Dying Swan solo – a five minute comic masterpiece of sheer magic. Joy of joys, it was to be a rare appearance by Miss Ida Nevasayneva, my favourite Trock, the marvellous creation of Paul Ghiselin. From the visual gags of the misplaced spotlight and the loose feathers, to Miss Nevasayneva’s wobbly, bandy legs and pained expressions, it’s five minutes where you can barely see the stage for tears of laughter. To witness Comrade Ida executing the terminal fowl one more time (something I had feared I would never see again) was a genuine thrill.

The final piece was Walpurgis Night, again a new piece for us – Go For Barocco and Raymonda’s Wedding seem to be temporarily retired. Superbly danced and elegantly staged, if I’m honest for me it didn’t have quite enough humour content to make the whole afternoon a balanced programme. It was still very enjoyable though, and the audience loved it. As usual we were treated to a surprise comedy curtain call act, which was very cleverly done and extremely different – but Mrs Chrisparkle and I both agreed we prefer their Lord of the Dance curtain routine.

But this is to take nothing away from the excellence of the performance. The Birmingham Hippodrome is a very big theatre and it was a delight to see it so packed with happy balletomanes and comedy appreciators alike! The Trocks are touring the UK until the end of February and you’ll regret it if you don’t catch them.