Sleeping Beauty
- Steve Griffiths
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Sir Kenneth Macmillan
English National Ballet
Palace Theatre, Manchester
November 19-22, 2025; 2hrs 40mins
Walking through Manchester at the moment is to see amazing sights: the Christmas markets are full of strange, exotic, weird things that people have spent the last months producing. Even more strange, people are buying things that will probably go straight into the nearest charity shop. Which brings me to my destination, the ENB production of The Sleeping Beauty.
Based on the original style of production from 1890, updated in 1987 by Sir Kenneth MacMillan, this is ballet from another age. Set in the courtly style of Louis XIV, the original Sun King, by the artistic director Aaron Watkins, the court has loads of froth and frippery. It is hard to take seriously a master of ceremonies (Richard Luck-Hille), dressed in the style of a colonial administrator from the 19 Century, with hat to match.
Fortunately the dancers more than make up for the setting. And there are so many of them. The ballet schools of the UK are probably grateful for this production as it features more tutus than you can shake a stick at: who knew that it can take three weeks to make a single tutu?
Clearly the princess Aurora (Emma Hawes) is in the limelight. To see her apparently effortlessly, standing en pointe for several minutes as she welcomes her four suitors is to watch the best of the best. But her fellow dancers are all great dancers too - which would explain the admiration for the skill on show that regularly welled up from the many young women in the audience.
The old ballet style is also expressed in the colour preference: black - as worn by the baddie, Carabosse, gives us all the clues we need about who to hiss at. The actor playing the role, James Streeter, was a magnificent example of the breed. With an accompanying quartet of dogs, he gives a superb performance of malice and affronted evil, and his ruff is a credit to original costume designer, Nicholas Georgiadis.
The music, directed by Dominic Grier, is Tchaikovsky at his most florid and the orchestra gives it all it needs: louder and more emotional than one might think possible. Great stuff.
At the end of the day, the audience really decides what a show is worth. And though there were some empty seats in the large theatre (it's not quite Christmas yet), the vast majority watching roared out their appreciation of a great troupe of young dancers.
(NB: cast members seen on other nights might not be those mentioned here)
More info and tickets here
