The Nashville Ballet premiered a new work, Robin Hood, this past weekend at TPAC’s Polk Theater. Brave little Nashville Ballet: After it was so trashed by last April’s tornado, its spring season was thrown into a tailspin and its lavish new production of the great ballet Swan Lake was put on hold for yet another season. Unlike TPAC, with broken windows apparent to all, the Nashville Ballet could not claim any insurance money. In fact, the company was thrown into near jeopardy due to the high production expenses involved in this full-length classic, combined with the sudden cessation of income from ticket sales. As with many other Nashville arts organizations, they are forced to run close to the bone. And yet, they go on with the show.
The obvious lack of resources available for this production was neatly finessed by the ingenious lighting. As always, Scott Leathers’ contributions are crucial. His evocative setting in the prison scene, where Maid Marian sits weeping and pining to be rescued, was most impressive. The lights were low except for one spotlight upon the platform where she reclined. A huge silhouette of bars and locks effectively conveyed her status as prisoner. His sets, too, were cost-effective but festive. Banners billowed in primary colors and helped to brighten the enormous empty spaces. The designer created a veritable children’s playground with slides to run up, huge poles to shimmy down, rope bridges to duel upon, bulwarks to sit upon, steps to run up and down, and platforms to—what else?—dance upon. It was fun to see how creative the choreographer Paul Vasterling could be as he expanded or confined his dances to fit spacial constraints.
The Nashville Ballet features some fine dancers. Kathryn Beasley Gager invariably looks beautiful. She was cool and poised even in the midst of a rape scene by one of the most wonderful villains to stride the stages of TPAC. Scott Brown played the villain you love to heckle, the one you cheer when he gets his comeuppance in the end, the kind of nasty guy who kicks small children and rips bread out of widows’ mouths. Boo. Hiss. He was the very caricature of villainy itself. Give him a real villain’s role that is subtly conceived, perhaps Rothbart in Swan Lake, and he would have a chance to revel more fully in wickedness.
As for the role of Robin Hood himself, Alexei Khimenko is undoubtedly a fine technician but was obviously not conversant with the story of Robin Hood, a political rebel who fought against the rapacious Anglo-Saxon Mafia of his time. He played the character as cute and boyish, which is appropriate for the prankster Til Eugenspeil but not necessarily for a legendary hero who attempts to redress the power imbalance between the arrogant rich and the starving poor.
It is unfortunate that the choreographer failed to provide his company with an overriding dramatic rationale for the characters’ actions. Vasterling is a choreographer whose strong suit is drama, but this time he was unusually inarticulate. For example, in order to portray the love the common people had for this Hood ’n’ his Boyz, a small waif would run into Robin’s arms right smack dab in the middle of a duel or some other inopportune moment of confrontation between good and evil. It was a puzzling device: Who was this kid? Was this Robin Hood’s illegitimate child? Was she a 2-year-old stray whose mother encouraged her to hang out with outlaws?
Equally confusing were the moments when the merry men teased poor beggars and mercilessly abused an old fat Friar. The only good deed they performed on stage consisted of distributing two loaves of bread to a homeless family of eight. That doesn’t exactly cut it.
Vasterling is highly regarded locally due to the standards he sets for his choreography, but this production is not yet there. It looks as if it were still a work in progress. Perhaps the heavy burden of administrative chores necessitated by his new role as artistic director of the company has led to the dilution of his creative powers. If so, that would be a shame—for his own personal growth as much as for that of the company. The dancers are real troopers, but they need his full time and energy for the company to grow in new directions.
