The Queen of Spades
Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal
City Center Theatre, New York City
February 16, 2002

Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal brought a new production to the City Center theatre of New York in February: a multi-media rendition of Alexander Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades. The work had some strong images but a few missteps by the creators weakened the impact it might have had.

A downstage scrim was in place to catch projected images and it stayed there the whole time, casting a filmy air of despair over the rest of the ballet. In some ways, this worked because it was one of those Russian tales steeped in a sense of doom. Where this didn’t work, however, was when playing cards were held up: one could hardly see them. Given the title of the piece, and the importance of the cards’ symbolism, this seemed like quite an oversight. The cards were only of standard size, which didn’t help in a big theatre, but with the added haziness of the scrim they were nearly invisible.

One of the best things in this ballet was the handling of dream sequences. One of the characters, a Countess, would begin to daydream and her imaginings would be acted out. Then suddenly, the whole scene would snap back to the reality of the moment. Magically, everyone is re-situated in the same postions they had been in before, and the audience finds itself joining the Countess in blinking and realizing “oh yes, this is where I really am.” The effect is created through masterful misdirection; it’s an unexpected delight to see a device from the theatre of magic used so well in this context.

There are some interesting scenes where the protagonists go to see a ballet. We are treated to viewing this work from the back and the side, while seeing the onstage audience looking on. This turning of the tables is fun, offering unusual perspectives on familiar things, but it’s a diversion that goes on a bit long without really furthering the storyline. It was not totally gratuitous, however, since it did serve to launch the Countess into her reminiscences of being a dancer which then led to a wonderful projection effect. As she recalls her youth, a ghostly movie of a dancing ballerina, as tall as the proscenium, is projected on the scrim. Again, something familiar, but with a twist. This towering ballerina was fascinating to watch.

Brandstrup’s choreography shone as the Countess (marvelously interpreted by Stephana Arnold), returns home from the ballet. Alone, she attempts to relive her youthful days and the resulting dance is ingeniously paradoxical. She is lithe, conveying her former strength, yet she looks very brittle, showing the frailty of her current age. Her shoulders seemed always to be in the upright carriage of a ballet dancer, but somehow there is the suggestion of the hump so often seen with osteoporosis. This was a poignant section and I wondered if some of the audience members were also aged ballerinas and, if so, how they felt watching the scene.

The protagonist, Hermann, wants to meet the Countess in order to learn her secret of winning at cards. He feigns love to her attendant, Lisa, to get inside their residence. Once inside, Hermann struggles with the Countess, trying to extract the secret. During the struggle, however, she dies. This is all rather brutal and frightening, and once dead, she slides off a chair into a hideous, awkward posture of death. I’m not sure what Brandstrup was up to, but he has Hermann try to put her back into the chair. This came across as rather comical. Then, like something out of a farce, she once again slides off and flops to the floor in a gruesome fashion. Thank goodness Brandstrup didn’t dictate any further attempts to seat the corpse.

Lisa later confronts Hermann on a bridge, professing her true love for him, but he is unmoved and leaves for the gambling hall. Lisa then has a gentle, extended partnering section with five men. A projection of rippling water fills the scrim and Lisa and her five men fade slowly out of view behind it. This was an extremely successful projection in that it suggests she had thrown herself from the bridge in despair. I imagined her drowning and, in her last fading moments of consciousness, feeling herself lovingly partnered by these five Hermanns.

As sad and wonderfully portrayed as this was, the thing that followed was equally dreadful. There was a scene change, the stage went dark, and the scrim was then filled with descending columns of digits which undeniably smacked of computer code as depicted in the blockbuster film The Matrix. Why, oh why, team of designers, didn’t you use a different effect? Someone should have realized the similarity and chosen more wisely: this Matrix-like transition elicited chuckles from the audience.

At the gambling hall, Hermann uses the Countess’s secret technique of winning at cards. He wins two hands and is held aloft in celebration by his fellow card players. Brandstrup does well depicting someone floating in the zero-gravity ecstacy of winning.

Because this is an object lesson, and Hermann has done some very bad things, we know he can’t win and sure enough, he loses everything on the next hand. The ending is saved from its predictability by two gems. One is a spectral appearance of the Countess. Hermann gestures to her in agonized fashion “How could I have lost?” and she replies… with a shrug! —as if to say “I don’t know. I guess luck is fickle.” This was another unexpectedly comic moment in Brandstrup’s choreography, but it sort of worked here: when someone is getting what he deserves, comedy is more appropriate than when it’s after the murder of a defenseless, old woman.

The other gem, which saved us from having to wait while a predictable ending ran its course, was Hermann’s subsequent descent into a kneeling, quivering, gelatinous blob of insanity. This was rendered so edgily by Mario Radacovsky that it was truly disturbing to watch.

While I found this performance to be a mixed bag, I thought it was successful overall and believe it’s worth a look, particularly for fans of grim Russian tales with sad endings. Just be sure to sit close enough to see the cards.