Well, hats off to Ben Duke and his company Lost Dog for sucking all the candy-coloured joy out of Christmas. While the Royal Ballet’s sugar-sweet Nutcracker plays on the main stage upstairs, downstairs we are in the gloomy murk of the classical underworld.
Hades himself (Jean-Daniel Broussé), perky in a see-through frock, points up the contrast, noting that our choice to sit engulfed in darkness says as much about the audience as it does about the show. “It’s 90 minutes you will never get back,” he adds. “That’s the thing about culture. You never know what you’re going to get.”
In fact, Ruination makes you delighted you took the gamble. Duke continues the exploration of how we tell stories and who we turn into heroes that has marked his entire career by turning his gaze on Medea, fresh from her desperate murder of her children, and subject to a trial at the behest of her ex-husband, Jason.
With its water cooler of forgetfulness, and Hades and Persephone playing defence and prosecuting counsels in pink suits, the show’s mixture of words and dance is fabulously witty, but also sumptuous in its physical invention. Liam Francis’s Jason tips himself off a gurney in a sprawl of stretched limbs, struggling to find his feet in his new surroundings.
When he meets Hannah Shepherd’s astonishingly powerful Medea, he stands naked as she hesitantly covers him with the salve that will save his life. He seduces her with an embarrassing flirty flick of his hips – a dance he will later repeat to win his second wife. Later, as Medea fights to be reunited with her children, she is raised and lowered by black-clad figures like a tormented Bill Viola resurrection, struggling towards a redemption she cannot find.
The music – live from exceptional musicians and singers – ranges from Rachmaninov to George Harrison and is always both apt and moving. The dancers, including the magnificent Miguel Altunaga, swaggering around like a sad Lord of Misrule, are all exceptional. The effect is deeply emotive and as much about love and giving as any Christmas show.
