Dutch National Ballet in Lady Macbeth

Dutch National Ballet has just premiered Lady Macbeth, created by a strong narrative team led by the very talented Helen Pickett…

Olga Smirnova and Timothy van Poucke in ‘Lady Macbeth’. © Altin Kaftira

Dutch National Ballet
Lady Macbeth
★★★✰✰
Amsterdam, Dutch National Opera & Ballet House
5 April 2025
www.operaballet.nl

It “really grabbed me by the throat.” Those were the thoughts of Dutch National Ballet’s director, Ted Branson, when he first saw Scottish Ballet’s The Crucible¹. He was so enamoured that he asked the three driving forces behind that production to do something for him in Amsterdam. Lady Macbeth is the result, and like The Crucible, it’s a bloody affair if the Shakespeare is simplified and given a non-trivial twist by looking at events through a woman’s eyes. But don’t think you have to know the play to see what’s happening; Helen Pickett and her artistic collaborator James Bonas have been at pains to create a work that stands alone and is readily followed. In this, they have been largely successful, aided and abetted by the third vital member of the original team, composer Peter Salem.

The thing that made The Crucible compelling — read any narrative ballet, really — is that it grabs you from the start and never really lets go. While some parts of Lady Macbeth certainly connected from the off, others didn’t, or rather caused confusion. On the very positive side, the Salem score is an absolute cracker of brooding energy — drums and blaring brass at times, a troubled and oppressive wall of near silence at others, as when murder is afoot. It is brilliant and well delivered by the Dutch Ballet Orchestra under the baton of Koen Kessels.

The designs by Luis F. Carvalho are a mix of interestingly effective and odd. The sets are late Romanov-inspired — say, 19th century. I have no particular quibble with them being a couple of centuries later than Shakespeare set things because they look handsome. The set cleverly decomposes and revolves to reveal grand staircases, a courtyard, or a kitchen, for example. At other times, a bedroom is suggested by just a gauze curtain obscuring a bed in a sea of blackness — very effective.

The perplexing thing is the costumes, which at the start had Lady Macbeth and her spiritual echoes in 21st-century leggings with what looked like Adidas stripes down the side. Truly, within seconds of curtain up, I wondered if the production was sponsored by the well-known sports manufacturer. That and why something as modern as leggings? It certainly grabbed my attention, but in the wrong way. Elsewhere, we got a doctor and nurse who looked to be dressed in the 20th century, if for the majority of the telling, we had costumes that looked 19th-century-right and moved well. In historical story telling I think there is a lot to be said for picking an era and just staying with it. A final note on production values concerns the killing of King Duncan — if somebody is stabbed multiple times, then the dagger becomes covered in blood; it doesn’t look fresh out of the box. Surprisingly amateurish and unthoughtful, if easily fixed.

The synopsis in the programme gives a brief sentence or two about each scene (there are 18 across 2 acts) and gets it just right on detail. I quickly read it before curtain up, and the actuality was such that I could see where we were all the time. I won’t paraphrase here; suffice it to say we get two significant murders, a hanging, and a suicide. If you need the fuller context, then the Wikipedia entry on the play is your friend.

Choreographically, the men, particularly Macbeth and Banquo, got the great dynamic movement with some terrific and unusual jumps, especially Joseph Massarelli as the latter. Lady Macduff was nicely acted by Floor Eimers, and her walk to the noose was probably the most touching part of the ballet. Olga Smirnova’s Lady Macbeth nicely transitioned from scheming wife, played with interesting mime and controlling high kicks, to a deranged and pitifully unhinged broken woman by the end. If the leggings section at the start felt wrong, then the suicide at the end felt considered and right — there were no loungers here, just a compact release from a nightmare world.

Although it’s a ballet centred on Lady Macbeth, on this night it felt like other characters, not least Macbeth himself, danced by the charismatic Timothy van Poucke, were more important. But regardless, it’s still a ripping yarn, of course. It will be interesting to see/hear what other casts make of it and how the overall work settles in the run.