Ooh-la-lacking

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(BORIS.MINKEVICH@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)

The first note in Moulin Rouge -- The Ballet is sounded by an open-air accordion player. He's joined by a violinist in a beret.

The song is the ultra-romantic La vie en rose. Not far away, we see a picturesque, three-dimensional Eiffel Tower outlined in lights.

There's short, bearded painter Toulouse-Lautrec (Yosuke Mino), busy at his canvas. To complete the 1890s Parisian clichés, a pretty girl in a black choker and a basketful of baguettes can't be far behind.

It's all très, très charming. And certainly, cultural clichés are as expected in Moulin Rouge as castanets in Carmen.

But the sense that the Royal Winnipeg Ballet has transported us to a sanitized Paris never leaves the much-anticipated production, which had its Canadian premiere Wednesday at the sold-out Centennial Concert Hall.

The Winnipeg Symphony plays the pastiche score -- by composers such as Lehar, Massenet, Shostakovich, Offenbach and Ravel -- with verve. Onstage musicians Quartetto Gelato add great street-cafe atmosphere.

The costumes by Anne Armit and Shannon Lovelace are mostly terrific, and the 26 dancers give their all.

But Moulin Rouge ultimately serves up too much cream puff and not enough cheap red wine and strong cigarettes.

The formula of sticking to safe, old-school classical choreography, a traditional orchestral score and earnest storytelling worked for RWB's Peter Pan, a success for in-house choreographer Jorden Morris.

But a style that's well suited to a fairytale often comes across as narrow, repetitive and dated in his Moulin Rouge. There are hokey moments, like the absurdly antiquated bit in which men form a perfect circle around the hero to keep him from a fistfight, and do leaping turns while they're at it.

A thin plot and cardboard characters don't have to be liabilities -- witness the opera Carmen's simple romantic triangle -- as long as you've got sensational numbers to flesh out the evening (which here lasts about two and a half hours, including intermission).

The flimsy story is that Matthew, a naïve painter, arrives in bohemian Montmartre. After being fleeced by the world's most wholesome Gypsies, he falls for Nathalie, a laundress who is chosen to star in the cancan show at the Moulin Rouge cabaret. Tragically, the lovers' bliss is destroyed by Zidler, the jealous club owner.

As the opening-night Matthew (soloists alternate), elegant Gael Lambiotte does a remarkable job of maturing the character from innocent boy to knowing man.

As Nathalie, Vanessa Lawson is luminous and expressive, but remains a ballerina. The star of the risqué nightclub ought to be somewhat provocative (even if it's a stage act), not prim and princess-like.

Jaime Vargas gets some of the most flamboyant costumes and tosses off showman-worthy leaps as the moustachioed Zidler. But his villainy is so melodramatic, one almost expects him to tie Nathalie to the railroad tracks.

Choreographer Morris can do no wrong with a captivating first-act lovers' pas de deux. Set to Debussy's gorgeous Claire de lune -- a relief after much galloping, cymbal-crashing music -- the duet is exquisitely understated and deeply romantic.

Even better is Matthew's poetic hallucination brought on by green absinthe, in which he's visited by three green fairies. Set to Ravel's piano-concerto movement Adagio assai, with more inventive movement and sensuality than any other scene, this one has emotional depth, full of yearning and painful disillusionment.

It's also the scene that allows Andrew Beck's stylized sets -- reminiscent of fantasy sequences in 1950s Hollywood musicals -- to function best.

Morris's temperament seems better tuned to melancholy than to humour. A scene in which tailors suit up Matthew is a cute diversion, but another in which Matthew and Toulouse-Lautrec have a painting duel is half-baked in terms of comic potential.

Finally, the central question about Moulin Rouge has to be: Is it sexy?

In the tango scene, yes, there is sultry allure in all those dips and flashes of leg, with Amanda Green a standout.

But there's a critical shortage of ooh la-la in the nightclub performances. We expect an outrageous den of decadence where naughty, black-stockinged performers tease the audience with peek-a-boo views of their thighs and underclothes.

Instead, we get pointe-shoe ballet in almost Disney-worthy dresses that lack taboo-feeling underlayers. Several of the cancan girls have blank faces that would get them kicked off a real cancan squad.

Where's the brash, vulgar zeal? Where's the grit? As real-life dancer La Goulue (The Glutton), Jo-Ann Sundermeier's topknot wig and costumes are so perfect, it's as if she leapt out of a Toulouse-Lautrec poster. But she's still too clean.

Jacelyn Lobay comes closest to pumping out megawatt cancan spirit as dancer La Mome Fromage.

Morris is only in his early 40s. One hopes that with his next story ballet, he'll stretch his classical boundaries and find more colours in his palette.

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 23, 2009 D1