Dance Review : Critters and Droll Dreamers at the Ballet

Cute, cute, cute. Also long, long, long.

The Orange County Performing Arts Center housed a lot of furry critters in toe shoes this weekend. The excuse was “Tales of Beatrix Potter,” courtesy of the Royal Ballet.

One wants to say Frederick Ashton’s “Tales of Beatrix Potter.” That, alas, may stretch veracity a bit.

Ashton created a fanciful film about Potter’s nursery menagerie back in 1971. He ennobled it with his own quintessentially refined portrait of Mrs. Tiggywinkle, the adorable hedgehog-washerwoman who frames the inaction with wistful country dances and spiffy music-hall routines.

Ashton never intended his Technicolored jeux d’esprit for the so-called living theater. Last year at Christmastime, however, his cinematic inventions were resurrected for the Royal Ballet by Anthony Dowell. Take that, “Nutcracker.”

Dowell’s intentions must have been noble. Nevertheless, his act of would-be homage earned grudging thanks, at best. Critics in London complained that much had been lost in the translation of choreography from screen to stage, and the master would not have approved. For all its understated humor, Dowell’s faux-Ashton indulgence reportedly made too much of a flimsy thing.

Indeed.

As presented at Segerstrom Hall during the Royal valedictory on Saturday, “Tales of Beatrix Potter” looked like a ballet that would appeal to kids of all ages from 7 to 9 1/2--for about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, it lasted 70.

Bone-fide balletomanes--timeless, ageless and ever-sophisticated--could take comfort in small in-jokes. The adorable Pigling Bland partnered his dark ballerina-hog, the adorable Pig-wig, in a hammy, rapturous Ashtonesque pas de deux. An adorable waltzing mouse corps used a tangle of adorable tails as ribbons in an adorable Maypole ritual.

Mr. Jeremy Fisher, the adorable frog prince with the ballooning ballon, found new dramatic meaning in the grand jete. Assorted adorable rodents went a-courting and a-marching. Peter Rabbit, an adorable also-hopped, danced an adorable tarantella.

Best of all, the adorable Jemima Puddleduck, past mistress of the silent quack, undulated her molting wings in an adorable exit that would have outfoxed Maya Plisetskaya as the long-suffering Odette. And so it went.

Adorably.

Slowly.

One had to admire the inherent expressive restraint. No blown-up Disney kitsch here.

One had to admire the rigorous vigor of the stoic, essentially anonymous dancers, all of them hidden behind frozen-expression masks and weighed down with bulky costumes. One had to admire the deftness of the movement patterns and the whimsy of the expressive nuances.

Only a critical curmudgeon would not respond to the assorted charms of the storybook decors designed by Christine Edzard or to the cuddly anthropomorphic faces provided by Rostislav Doboujinsky. Everyone could applaud John Lanchbery’s perky-pastiche score, which recycled theatrical tunes from various Victorian and Edwardian sources. Anthony Twiner and the Pacific Symphony made it all sound classy.

Still, one waited in vain for some narrative focus. One waited in vain for the flash of a unifying impulse.

Ultimately, Dowell reduced the tender tales of Potter and Ashton to an exercise in style, to an ambitious suite of period-piece contrivances. A little of that goes a long way.

The kiddies at the Saturday matinee fled in droves. Their impatience was exacerbated, no doubt, by the trial of an hourlong curtain-raiser, Ashton’s “The Dream.”

This poetic distillation of Shakespeare and Mendelssohn, anno 1964, remains a model of affectionate pathos and elegant wit. But, apart from the inspiration of Bottom’s asinine hoofing en pointe, it doesn’t offer much for the preteen crowd. The noisy little natives were restless.

The performances--with one cast working in the afternoon and another in the evening--were bright and undeniably high-spirited. They could have frustrated only the sentimental fossils in the crowd--this one, for instance--who can’t forget the sly enchantment of Anthony Dowell as Oberon and Antoinette Sibley as Titania, not to mention the poignant bumbling of Alexander Grant as the rustic who temporarily becomes a donkey.

It should be admitted, however, that no one remembered from the golden age could match the nonchalant razzle-dazzle of Tetsuya Kumakawa, whose Puck flew faster than a speeding bullet at the matinee and, no doubt, could have leapt over high buildings in a single bound. By comparison, Peter Abegglen, his evening counterpart, was merely fleet, neat and competent.

The same three adjectives might describe the performances in general. The Royal “Dream” has certainly not become a nightmare; but it has lost much of its dramatic spark and precise edge. If we had wanted friendly, fuzzy approximations, we could have settled for the Joffrey version.

At the matinee, the dashing Jose Manuel Carreno struck macho poses and flashed blank smiles as Oberon--no dangerous insinuation here. Leanne Benjamin was blandness personified as a Titania neither willful nor mercurial.

In the evening, the earnest William Trevitt served as another stock Oberon and, like his immediate predecessor, found the muted bravura something of a trial. Sarah Wildor, an incidental fairy at 3, became a sweetly wily mini-queen at 8 when she replaced the injured Lesley Collier.

In both cases, the climactic pas de deux wasn’t.

Iain Webb and Luke Heydon served as competent, interchangeable Bottoms. Genesia Rosato, an exceptionally delirious Helena in the second cast, stood out among the foolish mortals.

Mendelssohn was deftly served in the pit by Barry Wordsworth and the Pacific Symphony. The children of the Pacific Chorale attended nicely to their ethereal chores, especially at night. Too bad their efforts were compromised by tinny amplification.