19 June – 6 July

Something struck me forcibly as I watched this three part programme, which continues the successful tenure of Deborah Warner as artistic director at the Ustinov. Part one is a short film by choreographer, Kim Brandstrup, titled Leda and the Swan. The film is beautiful, it is beautifully shot, beautifully edited, beautifully danced, beautifully erotic (Brandstrup takes the seduction version of the myth rather than the rape) and yet something is missing. It was that sense of bodies in space; how they relate to each other and the space they are in. Only then does movement fully express the human form and the emotions it can convey. Nevertheless, with music by Nico Muhly and the words of W.B.Yeats read by Fiona Shaw it forms an amuse-bouche to the evening’s menu.

Next up were six pieces for oboe by Britten, contemplations on Ovid’s Metamorphoses played with singular immersion by Judy Proctor.

The main part of the programme explores the pre-Freudian notion of self-love through the Greek myth of Narcissus and his would-be lover Echo, a nymph who had been deprived of the power of speech for helping Zeus slip away from Hera and Juno for one of his numerous amorous adventures.

A blind Tiresias (Jonathan Goddard) the bringer of prophesy, explores his world with touch. His interaction with the beautiful Narcissus (Seirian Griffiths) suggests, not love, but the isolation of self-obsession. The advances of the enamoured Echo (Laurel Dalley-Smith) are likewise rejected. Her tentative approaches have no effect. Only when his reflection becomes embodied (Jacob Wye) does Narcissus become engaged with an apparent ‘other’. There is comedy here as he seems at one moment bashful about approaching his own beautiful image, whilst at another, full of teenage joy.

The Ustinov is a jewel box of a theatre and Kim Brandstrup has again provided us with gems.

★★★★☆  Graham Wyles, 27 June 2024

Photo credit: Foteini Christofilopoulo