Cleopatra

Creative Director of Northern Ballet David Nixon's choice of Claude-Michel Schonberg as composer betrays the potential richness intended for their new ballet. Schonberg's muses are certainly emotionally heavy, iconic and culturally complex. He's tackled the French Revolution, turned Les Miserables into a musical, and, previously with Nixon, adapted Wuthering Heights. Tonight's performance sees the pair reunited for what is probably the most ambitious project of both their careers: Cleopatra.

One of history's most enduring tragic love stories; it is suitably dark, emotive territory for the creative team. Nixon is a popular choreographer, and has built an audience in his decade at Northern through a commitment to new works and a consistent touring schedule. Despite this, the performance is invariably a disappointment. Choreographically, the piece is tired and clichéd. Whilst there are several accomplished but conventional duets between Cleopatra (Martha Leebolt), and her lovers, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony (Javier Torres and Tobias Batley) these weighted moments seem token, and at odds with a poorly paced, racing narrative. Serpent-god antagonist Wadjet's (Kenneth Tindall) contemporary steps were engaging in comparison, but were hardly compelling enough to carry the performance. Leebolt herself is oddly demure. Nixon's Cleopatra is neither seductive nor powerful. Instead, she is strangely submissive to both God and man, and is unable to command neither her fellow leads' nor the audience's imagination.

Poorer still are the rest of the company, particularly the Roman Army, who bound about in low budget sword and sandals garb. The performers look embarrassed and uninspired and they aren't the only ones.

The Orchestra, Northern Ballet Sinfonia, were completely flat. Despite the breadth of his subject matter, Schonberg has created an incredibly pedestrian score that is ridiculously unsubtle: one almost expects jazz hands, to compliment Nixon's 'walk like an Egyptian'. Childish use of melodic leitmotifs range from silly to crass: Wadjets' hypnotic meanderings are rendered through 'tribal' African percussion, uncommon to the orchestra, whilst the Romans find expression in an orderly tonality. It's a piece of such rare cultural insensitivity as to be fairly shocking as well as musically trashy.

Schonberg's blundering simplicity renders the incredible laziness near unwatchable. The failure was comprehensive. Even the lighting rig was so poorly designed that a continuous spotlight reflection danced of its own accord above the performers' heads which, truthfully, became a welcome distraction.