A Wedding Tale

Chapter 20: Reviews

April 26, 2020

     After a amazing opening night, we are getting ready to finish our opening weekend with all sold out shows. My dressing room is now covered with flowers of every color and type. Everyone has been so supportive and I couldn't be more grateful.

     Xoxo,
         Marilyn Danäe Minnelli

     I arrived at the theatre for our two show day at 10:00. I went up to my dressing room and began to prepare for the first show. I always loved entering my dressing room during the daytime because I had the most beautiful view of the city. Beams of light always flowed through the window and gave the room a soft glow. The beautiful shade and smell of flowers covered the room. Before I did anything, I opened my window and let the natural air in. A soft breeze lingered throughout the room. I enjoyed having the natural light, flowers, and breeze, especially since I was inside all day.

     First, I hopped on the ground and dig through my pile of pointe shoes for the pairs I would wear today. As I searched for the perfect pairs of shoes, I heard the door open behind me. I turned around to see Skylar with a newspaper. "Marilyn! Did you read the article in the paper about our show? Did you see the reviews?" he asked with a large smile on his face.

     "No, can you read them to me?"

     "Absolutely!" he began as I continued my search. I listened deeply as he struggled through the complex article. "It is always a pleasure to see Brooklyn Ballet's productions. The Winter's Tale at the McDouglass Theatre did not fail. Where many of ballet's hardy perennials (from Giselle to La Bayadère to Swan Lake) are now in their third century, Christopher Wheeldon's adaptation of Shakespeare's tricksy late play was created only in 2014, making it a relative newborn. However, this remarkably complete piece of work already feels every bit as integral to the ballet repertoire as any of its distinguished forebears. Artistic Director, Audrey Minnelli, took on the challenge of the new ballet, and set it perfectly on her company.

     Watching the opening night of this run on Friday, I was repeatedly struck by one of the great secrets of its success. It isn't just that its steps are so carefully driven by character and by Wheeldon's keen eye for drama: it's that they look by turns such fun and so satisfying to dance (often both at once), and the Brooklyn Ballet's apparent enthusiasm for the piece effer- effer..."

     "Effervesces," I suggested.

     "Thanks... from the stage.

     Act I, the darkest and most substantial of the three, sets the scene with a succession of pungent (if still slightly overlong) mad scenes for Leontes, King of Sicilia, driven to insanity by suspicions that his wife, Hermione, is pregnant not by him but by his old friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia. Making his debut in the role, Jonatan Luján acquitted himself admirably and proved himself cunningly cast. In the clever freeze-frame passage when Leontes's worst fears suddenly start to germinate, it's particularly chilling to see Luján's craftsmanlike classicism and twinkle-in-the-eye bonhomie suddenly corrode into preying-mantis angularity and ferocity.

     Plaudits too, both here and in Act III, to Marilyn Danäe Minnelli, physical and emotional grace incarnate as Hermione, and also to Callie Ann White, as Hermione's take-no-prisoners aide, Paulina (effectively the piece's twin moral fulcrums). Very few dancers anywhere fuse such acute musicality and dramatic bite, and it's hard to imagine anyone executing, say, Paulina's ferocious pursuit of Leontes across the stage – cuffing him with each turn – with more precision, or more venom. At only sixteen and eighteen, Minnelli and White deliver an emotional and precise performance.