Merlin

Drew McOnie, music by Grant Olding

Northern Ballet

Grand Theatre, Leeds

September 13-20, 2025: 2 hrs 15 mins

(also Sheffield Lyceum, November 4-8)

Sword v sorcery: Northern Ballet dancers in Merlin: pics by Emily Nuttall (other pics by Tristram Kenton)

The Arthurian legends are a great hunting ground for creators intent on making new fantasy-style stories for our times. They’ve got it all: sword and sorcery, brave knights and fair maidens, mythical creatures and evil geniuses, you name it - and you can make what you will of them all.

The story of Merlin, wizardy side-kick of King Arthur, could have been a kind of Dumbledore or Gandalf tale... but Drew McOnie’s ballet for the Leeds-based company is not that. It might even have been called "Young Merlin”, as it’s about a boy with super powers who never completely grows up and who ends, after all his adventures, going home to mum.

Olivier award-winning McOnie (known for Broadway’s King Kong and Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom), in this, his first full-length ballet - created for Northern Ballet in 2021 - wanted it like that: partly because it’s intended to be a family show, of appeal to children, and partly because he’s remade the legend to reflect his own experience.

It's still got plenty of the stuff we all like in Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings – even a bit of How To Train Your Dragon – with warring armies, an insecure ruler, a femme fatale, a sprinkling of magic, young love, and courage winning the day.

There’s the magic sword, Excalibur, which Merlin receives not from The Lady of the Lake (she’s revealed to be his real mother, with Helios, the sun god, his real father) but from his foster mum (and true carer), a female blacksmith. There’s Morgan Le Fay, a black-clad female warrior who wants to steal young Merlin’s powers. There’s Uther, the crown prince, who’s real love interest is the beautiful Princess Ygraine.

The Lady of the Lake and Helios take a keen interest in young Merlin and keep popping back into his life, while Morgan fancies Uther but insists on beating him in battle, which he doesn’t care for, so she turns to inveigling Merlin’s powers from him. There are two kingdoms in conflict, so soldiers show up to do battle quite a lot.

It all gets quite complicated, with much twirling of spears, but I can tell you there’s a happy ending. The staging of the story is sparse but spectacular, with Colin Richmond’s set and costume designs enhanced by Anna Watson’s lighting, and illusions by Chris Fisher plus puppetry by Rachael Canning.

But it’s still a narrative ballet of the kind that Northern have made their own, with classical technique on show and some fine lyrical moments. The score, by theatre composer Grant Olding, encapsulates a variety of styles (some rather in the style of Prokoviev) and moves quickly from one scene to the next, particularly in the prologue and opening part of Act One. Later, for a couple of Camelot scenes, there are Tchaikovsky-style waltzes and solo dances reminiscent of a classical divertissement.

In the cast I saw, the stand-out was Rachael Gillespie as Ygraine (finely partnered by Filippo Di Vilio), with Saeka Shirai as a cold-eyed Morgan, Amber Lewis bringing tough humanity to the maternal Blacksmith and Heather Lehan floating gracefully as the Lady of the Lake. Kevin Poeung was the innocent but stalwart Merlin, bullied and often ignored, who plays his part in epic events and, with the help of his trusty dragon, still remains a good lad at heart.

More info and tickets here