Hamlet
Edinburgh Festival Ballet
Ashton Hall, St Stephens, Edinburgh

ALL that is locally lamented about the descent of Edinburgh Fringe hordes is waived with the observation that local businesses profit. Tills must ring loud at this juncture, so that year-round ventures retain a toehold in this pricey heritage town.

Local businessman Peter Schaufuss owns two unsubsidised performance venues and runs a dance degree course that feeds his Edinburgh Festival Ballet and provides a setting for audacious production. Schaufuss’s venues house hundreds of seats. Bums are on them.

In this Hamlet, he proposes a “new performance concept.” The show’s secondary tagline “a guaranteed sell out” proves more accurate. Notice the use of the spacebar in this formulation — sell out not sell-out. Such synapses are a godsend, as is Ian McKellen who cuts through the conceptual hubris by stating in his programme note: “this production is my first time in a ballet.” Truth will out.

Ballet it is – and none the worse for that. McKellen’s honest wisdom finds its equivalent in impressively constructed danced scenes and the aplomb therein.

A fragrant erstwhile premier danseur garlanded with triumphs in the 19th-century repertory, Peter Schaufuss binds today’s show with cogent opera-house stagecraft.

There’s additional power in the Shakespearean stuff of pace-changes and the welcome alternation between individual and group energies. Organised chorus work gave way to a language of raucous banging and shouting and running up the aisles. Here then is adventure, adroitly braced by McKellen’s intimate familiarity with good ways of going about things.

All his action is just right: he hasn’t been parachuted into folly. He makes the pairing of his speaking Hamlet with a dancing one utterly unproblematic by his immersion in his communicative task.

Yet there are questionable oddities. Perhaps because it’s ballet, the action is played out to nonstop music. Conveniently this score sounds enough like a movie blockbuster soundtrack to make those who have strayed in to witness their Gandalf-in-avatar feel they have come to the right place. The epic noise is at its best during McKellen’s monologues – when it pauses.

Where medieval audiences might have gone along to get a good fix of bloodbath action, this afternoon’s dance audience were getting their fill of leaps and spins. The balletic moves are deft, apparently effortless and hence intrinsically reason-less. These hurdles jump out in comparison with the way a good actor clearly thinks things through internally and moves accordingly.

Caroline Rees (Gertrude) and Katie Rose (Ophelia) add the colour of motivational frowns and smiles to their ongoing geometric grace. This may be right in terms of performed femininity in a courtly way.

Meanwhile a panther-like and riveting Horatio and our dancing Hamlet had an unforgettable line in abrupt bad-boy emphasis.

Yet the finesse in the physical interaction between McKellen and his exquisite male co-players was the thing of real interest. He thrives on it. Up close you could see how they glowed.

The stage was a thrust but there was little more than a nod to playing in-the-round whenever the vigorous choreography got going. People entering the house first were told that the central bank of seats were the best. Had they paid more?

Those at the side watched a lot of action in profile and there was odd momentary recourse to arcane balletic gesture which only makes sense when viewed face-on (if it ever really makes sense).

But none of these mis-choices interfered with the trajectory of success. There was a standing ovation: all were happy, including, no doubt, the trustees.

Will these forces gather again to really have fun and make something new: something less commercially driven that would engage more immediately?

Warhorses were fresh once.

Until August 27 2022.Box office: 0131 226 0026, www.citizenticket.co.uk/