“The Happy Prince” brings world-class ballet, meshing Oscar Wilde’s life with his fairytales

The premiere of Penny Saunders’ choreography is a fitting conclusion to artistic director Patricia Barker’s tenure at Grand Rapids Ballet. Performances continue this weekend, May 11 and 12.

Yuka Oba as Nightingale (left) and Isaac Aoki as Oscar Wilde (right) in Penny Saunders’ “The Happy Prince & Other Wilde Tales) at Grand Rapids Ballet. Photo credit Jade Butler.

Friday night’s world premiere of Penny Saunders’ “The Happy Prince & Other Wilde Tales” proved an apropos and triumphant conclusion to Patricia Barker’s eight year stint as artistic director of Grand Rapids Ballet (GRB). The first full-length story ballet that GRB’s resident choreographer Saunders has created, the ballet is a brilliant debut.

Visually spellbinding, thanks in large part to the in-house talents of GRB staff— including scenic & prop designer John Ferraro, projection designer Michael Auer, and a host of others—the multimedia “The Happy Prince & Other Wilde Tales” has the look and feel of a ballet more likely to be seen on a European stage than one in the U.S. Midwest.

The contemporary ballet adopts a motif of metaphorically paralleling the complicated life of Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) to three of his tales for children: “The Happy Prince,” “The Selfish Giant,” and “The Nightingale & The Rose.” It’s set to an eclectic mix of music, some from classical composers of Wilde’s day, and is a heartfelt statement on love, societal norms, and our shared humanity or lack thereof.

Saunders’ meshing of Wilde’s real life story and that of his fairytales comes in the form of old voice recordings of “Sherlock Holmes” actor Basil Rathbone reciting excerpts of the three Wilde children’s tales layered on top of a running narrative of Wilde’s life seen in dance. On occasion throughout, characters from his tales more than metaphorically cross over into the abstracted dance narrative of his life.

The two act ballet opens with Rathbone reciting Wilde’s “The Happy Prince” and GRB dancer Isaac Aoki, as Oscar Wilde, standing atop a large, 40 foot wide artificial grass hill that dominates the stage. Already having reached celebrity status in his life, the image paints a picture of Wilde as the gleaming “Happy Prince” of the tale, looking over the admiring townsfolk below.

Victorian-era socialites and their children are dressed in impressive period costumes designed by Sadie Rothenberg and Saunders. Employing a stage-filling cast of GRB’s dancers, some from GRB’s Jr. Company and students from the Grand Rapids Ballet School, Saunders effectively brings to life the image of prim, proper, and fashionable Londoners. Most intriguing in the beginning half of act one is Saunders’ theatrical choreography a la choreographer Hermes Pan’s “Ascot Gavotte” from the 1964 film “My Fair Lady.” Saunders has created a succession of beautifully crafted mini-tableaus of outdoor chess games, children at play, and the courtship of Wilde and his soon to be wife Constance Lloyd (Cassidy Isaacson) accompanied by fleeting laughter, excited gasps, and other vocalized exclamations.

Photos credit Eric Bouwens.

As with any generally unfamiliar source material for a ballet, a reading of the program note’s synopsis and background material, as well as a general knowledge of Wilde’s life story, is useful in understanding this ballet’s narrative. Even without it though, the briskly moving production through its choreography, characterizations, visual elements, and Rathbone’s narration gives a sense of Wilde as a man torn between his socially acceptable heterosexual family life and that of the forbidden homosexual love life he yearned for—that would eventually lead to his ruin.

Perhaps the lone criticism of the ballet early is that it could have benefitted with a few breathers. A few moments of pause in the rapid storytelling pace would provide a chance to further develop the leading characters’ relationships and motivations, as well as the viewer’s investment in them. Characters such as Wilde’s friend Robert Ross (Nigel Tau), his parents Jane (Connie Flachs) and William Wilde (Steven Houser), while helping to advance the storyline, lacked depth.

The latter half of act one moved into the estrangement of Wilde from his wife and children and Wilde being introduced to the life he secretly longed for. That transition was wonderfully signaled in a brief moment of a desperate glance and reaching out to Aoki by GRB student dancer Elin Escobar Forsberg as Wilde’s youngest son Vyvyan, as if to say don’t go, but also acting as a warning of the beginning of the end of Wilde’s career and life.

While often quiet and understated, Aoki’s portrayal of Wilde throughout the ballet was engaging. He brought charm and emotional complexity to Wilde through his solid dancing. Nowhere was that more in evidence than in scenes after Wilde’s introduction by Ross to Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, who would become his lover and obsession. Portrayed wonderfully by dancer Matt Wenckowski, the pas de deuxs between the two men were some of the ballet’s finest dancing.

Scenes from “The Happy Prince & Other Wilde Tales.” Photos credit Eric Bouwens.

In the ballet’s second act, Saunders succeeded in cementing the lead characters’ relationships via several emotionally and visually vivid scenes danced expertly by Aoki, Wenckowski, Isaacson and others.

Saunders uses Wilde’s heartbreaking tale “The Nightingale & The Rose,” the story of a nightingale giving up its life to change a white rose into a red one with its blood. The nightingale sacrifices its life in order for a young man to woo a young woman and find love—only to have her reject him and his red rose. The act masterfully brought home the metaphoric connection between the tale and Wilde’s eventual loss of family, career, reputation, and freedom, all in his quest for love.

Notable in the act is a pivotal scene taking place at a garden party thrown by the Wildes to dispel rumors of a troubled marriage. It begins with Aoki and Isaacson coldly waltzing with each other, revealing the distance in their relationship. That morphs into a deliciously choreographed love triangle dance between with Wilde, his wife Constance and his lover Bosie. The twisting and turning of Isaacson and Wenckowski shows their desperate attempts to gain Aoki’s favor, with Wenckowski as Bosie winning out in the end.

Oscar and the Nightingale. Photos credit Eric Bouwens.

The second act and the ballet come to a gripping climax with Wilde, now cast out of society and imprisoned for his same sex love affair, being visited by dancer Yuka Oba as storybook “Nightingale.” In easily the ballet’s most moving scene, Oba as the noble bird becomes the physical manifestation of Wilde’s reflections on his life and all that he has lost or not realized in his search for true love. The ballet’s final images show Oba, a la Aoki as the Happy Prince at the beginning of the ballet, standing atop the hill. Aoki looks up from below and the two—Wilde and the Nightingale—become one in spirit.

The Nightingale atop the hill beckoning to Oscar Wilde. Photo credit Jade Butler.

A rising choreographic star whose career is just beginning to take off, Saunders shows in “The Happy Prince and Other Wilde Tales” a world-class effort, one that further boosts Grand Rapids Ballet’s own upward trajectory.

Grand Rapids Ballet’s “The Happy Prince & Other Wilde Tales”

Friday, May 11, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 12, 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
Peter Martin Wege Theatre
341 Ellsworth SW, downtown
Tickets $46 each
Purchase tickets online or call (616) 454–4771 ext. 10
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