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Dance Review : Royal Ballet Turns to Madness of ‘Mayerling’ : The beloved British company opens its week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center with Kenneth MacMillan’s narrative fantasy about a crazy, mixed-up royal sadist.

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TIMES MUSIC/DANCE CRITIC

The Royal Ballet could have opened its week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Tuesday with “The Sleeping Beauty.”

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For the record:

12:00 a.m. May 6, 1994 For the Record
Los Angeles Times Friday May 6, 1994 Home Edition Calendar Part F Page 6 Column 1 Entertainment Desk 1 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
“Carousel” character-- Thursday’s review of the Royal Ballet’s “Mayerling” misnamed the character who danced in Kenneth MacMillan’s “Carousel” pas de deux. It was Louise, Julie Jordan’s daughter.

The beloved British company has a lavish, brand-new production of the sweet fairy-tale classic in its repertory, staged by Anthony Dowell. Other American cities are seeing it on the current tour.

But local impresarios fear Southern California has seen too much of the pristine Princess Aurora. Ergo, in place of the dainty beauty, Dowell and his administrative associates brought us a nasty beast: Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary.

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Lilac Fairies are out. “Mayerling” is in.

Remember “Mayerling”? That’s Kenneth MacMillan’s convoluted, overpopulated, raunchy, athletic, picturesque, often effective, sometimes boring, quasi-historical narrative fantasy about a crazy, mixed-up syphilitic royal sadist who also happens to be a masochist, murderer, dope fiend, political schemer and heroic danseur-ignoble.

Lilac Fairyland was never like this.

Los Angeles hosted the American premiere of “Mayerling” back in 1978 at Shrine Auditorium (remember Shrine Auditorium?). Stephen Jefferies impressed as the glowering monarch-to-be whose partners included such disparate paragons as Lynn Seymour, Merle Park and Georgina Parkinson.

We were struck at the time by the tawdriness of the concept, the brilliance of its execution, the long patches of silly busy-work that separate the bona-fide climaxes, and the flaccidity of a mock-romantic score pasted together by John Lanchbery (he’s got a little Liszt . . . ).

Still, we had to admire the shameless sweep and grandeur of the project. And we were awed by a series of pas de deux devised by MacMillan to define and differentiate the central relationships--in turn lyric, dramatic, mechanical, casual, passionate, deranged and terminally violent.

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The current “Mayerling” was first performed in London on the fateful night of Oct. 29, 1992. MacMillan collapsed and died backstage during the performance.

In some ways, the revival serves as a fitting testimonial to a dauntlessly theatrical choreographer. Although he often valued bad grammar over good taste, he always did it with flair.

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It is ironic to note, incidentally, that MacMillan was completing the dance interludes for the new “Carousel” at the time of his death. The disheartening result of that final labor can be seen these days at Lincoln Center. In the musical, expressive invention gives way to stilted formality. MacMillan’s stock pas de deux for Julie Jordan (she’s a queer one) and her cavalier must have poor Agnes de Mille churning in her grave.

There certainly is nothing so conventional or so vapid in the set pieces of “Mayerling.” Here, even the apache-dance duets spring from the emotional crises, however hokey they may be.

The Royal Ballet goes through MacMillan’s daunting rituals with bravura conviction. The company dances--and poses and gestures--as if lives were at stake. Forget everything you ever heard about stolid English reserve.

In the case of Irek Mukhamedov--who stalked the boards, fired the pistols, pressed the morphine syringe and twisted the assorted ballerinas as Rudolf--English reserve was no issue. The man is a former divo of the Bolshoi. Understatement was never his thing. Still, he does bring a certain degree of repression to his movement vocabulary here, and it only heightens the tension.

Wild-eyed and long limbed, Mukhamedov broods splendidly and explodes magnificently. He bears all physical burdens with forceful equanimity, and few challenges in the repertory can offer as many burdens as this. If, ultimately, he cannot inspire much sympathy for the destructive prince, don’t blame him. Blame Gillian Freeman, who wrote the bloody scenario. Blame MacMillan.

Viviana Durante complements Mukhamedov most poignantly as the 17-year-old Mary Vetsera, an innocent obsessed with the ecstasy of destruction. She floats with fearless abandon through their torrid encounters, and crumbles with pathos worthy of her illustrious but far less fragile predecessor, Lynn Seymour. She also makes a stunning virtue of one MacMillan vice: the overuse of hyper-extended limbs to signal a soul in torment.

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Genesia Rosato, who had played a young flirt in the original cast, returned on this occasion to exude worldly eroticism and bitter frustration as the Countess Larisch. She did so, incidentally, as a replacement for Lesley Collier, the senior ballerina who suffered a torn calf muscle while dancing “Sleeping Beauty” in Texas last week.

The stellar supporting ensemble--ensemble is definitely the right noun in this case--included Nicola Tranah as the brittle Empress Elisabeth, Jane Burn as the sympathetic Princess Stephanie, Derek Rencher as the stuffy Emperor Franz Josef, Fiona Chadwick as the high-class whore, Mitzi Caspar, and Johnathan Howells as the blithely entertaining cab-driver, Bratfisch. The Royal Ballet still commands artistry in depth.

Nicholas Georgiadis’ literal decors remain attractive and reasonably supportive of the inherent dark moods. John B. Read’s fluid lighting scheme reinforces the cinematic frame of reference.

Barry Wordsworth served Liszt, Lanchbery and the dancers appreciatively in a pit exceptionally well-staffed by the Pacific Symphony. It wasn’t the conductor’s fault, of course, that the pastiche resists dramatic development and expansion, that the sudden appearance of a solo piano disrupts stylistic continuity, and that we never get to hear a bona-fide “Liebestraum.”

Nor can one blame him for the incongruous introduction of a mezzo-soprano to impersonate the emperor’s “friend” Katherina Schratt (a rather wobbly Beverley Mills). Her valedictory Lied may be pretty, but it jolts the senses.

If these characters could really use their voices, they wouldn’t resort to all that silent emoting. And we wouldn’t have a ballet.

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* The Royal Ballet performs different programs at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, through Sunday. Tickets $20-$70 at the box office, (714) 556-ARTS, ext. 240.

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