National Ballet’s ‘MADDADDAM’ is a sensory feast of sights and sounds

MaddAddam

Choreographed by Wayne McGregor for the National Ballet of Canada. Inspired by Margaret Atwood’s “MaddAddam Trilogy.” At the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. W., until Nov. 30. national.ballet.ca, 416-345-9595 or 1-866-345-9595

How do you solve a problem like MaddAddam?

If you’re British star choreographer Wayne McGregor you begin by acknowledging the futility of a literal page-to-stage transfer of Canadian icon Margaret Atwood’s dystopian, postapocalyptic speculative fiction trilogy of the same name. Instead, you go for broke with an impressionistic, emotionally charged theatrical response to the books’ overarching themes and muster a small army of your favourite artistic collaborators to aid the project.

The result is a sensory feast of sights and sounds so overwhelming that at times you find your head spinning, yet that nevertheless offers an undeniably thrilling experience.

No wonder, then, that they stood and cheered on Wednesday night as the National Ballet of Canada danced the much-hyped, mega-marketed world premiere of McGregor’s “MADDADDAM,” its title for some reason insistently shouted in capital letters. Atwood beamed as McGregor invited her to join the curtain calls; an even bigger roar of approval.

Most choreographers delving into literature opt for familiar stories so that even if you’ve not read the text or seen the play you have a basic idea of what’s going on. Think “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet,” “Cinderella.” And, of course, there’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” a runaway hit for the National Ballet in its 2011 rendering by Christopher Wheeldon and, like “MADDADDAM,” a co-production with the Royal Ballet, except in the current instance it’s the British company that’s chipped in half the alleged $2-million budget while allowing the Canadians the privilege of bringing the production to the stage.

You could even include Atwood’s 1985 “The Handmaid’s Tale” in the camp of familiar narratives since it has become widely known through film and television. Indeed, Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet performs a dance adaptation by American choreographer Lila York. “MADDADDAM”? Not so much.

Atwood’s trilogy is immensely complex with overlapping timelines, flashbacks and a shifting cast of characters who sometimes don’t even keep the same names or outward appearance. As Atwood builds her all-too-prophetic indictment of human cupidity and degeneracy, the books’ grim events are conveyed from multiple perspectives. It makes for challenging but enthralling reading.

The natural question, then, is whether one needs to read the books to get anything from the ballet. There is no clear answer.

If you’ve read the books you might be frustrated by what’s left out, although you’ll be spared the discomforting kiddie porn through which Atwood first introduces us to the mysterious Oryx, who later becomes the apex of a love triangle.

If you have not read the trilogy, even dramaturge Uzma Hameed’s lengthy introductory house program essay is unlikely to aid navigation through the tangled web of thinly drawn characters. This is particularly true in “Castaway,” the first of “MADDADDAM’s” three, 30-minute acts.

Here McGregor attempts a summary of the trilogy’s main plot lines, including of course the “Waterless Flood” of a lethal global pandemic, engineered by the morally ambiguous mad scientist Crake, that wipes out most of the human race he so deeply despises. McGregor introduces us to all the principal characters who survive the catastrophe and to the genetically engineered breed of sweetly innocent, polyamorous, herbivorous and songful hominids called, after their creator, Crakers.

McGregor even throws in references, courtesy of Ravi Deepres’s film contributions, to Atwood’s denunciations of capitalism, corporatism and urbanization run amok. If you don’t blink you might even see a fleeting image of the CN Tower.

The choreography, initially in slow motion mode, is hard to see in Lucy Carter’s moody but gloomy lighting, particularly when it’s behind a scrim. The projected effects are wonderfully achieved in themselves. Architectural firm We Not I’s huge three-dimensional egglike sphere is a magnet for the eye, but it also distracts from what, in a ballet, you’d assume is going to be the main event: the dancing.

Then everything changes for the better. The remaining two acts are full of gob-smackingly inventive choreography with large casts of dancers creating an almost kaleidoscopic whirl of movement or, in duets, counterbalancing or cantilevering each other as limbs shoot outward or as dancers are borne aloft in perilous shoulder lifts.

Act 2 is titled “Extinctathon,” a reference to an online game that childhood pals Crake and Jimmy play in Atwood’s trilogy when not watching a TV channel featuring real-time executions. Gareth Pugh’s elaborate costume designs for Act I give way now to minimal white. The characters, transposed from Act I, are identified as “Player 1,” “Player 2” and so on. Above them hangs the architectural cluster of an upside down city.

Projected captions don’t help much to explain precisely what’s going on. The introduction of a spoken passage from “Burning Questions,” Atwood’s recent essay collection, is somewhat heavy-handed. We already get the point.

Act 3, “Dawn,” is the most emotionally impactful as McGregor essays a new Genesis potentially free of strife and respectful of nature. The Crakers will carry the torch as they mourn the ancestors.

As elsewhere in “MADDADDAM,” Max Richter’s commissioned score, a seamless blend of recorded electronica and live orchestra, ably supports and emotionally complements what we are witnessing, whether it’s flirting with EDM in Act II or mustering the sweeping full-blown sound of an epic film score in Act III.

A ballet like this inevitably takes time to settle in. In the world of commercial theatre Wednesday night would have been a first preview. That said, the National Ballet’s dancers delivered an impressive debut with standout performances by Harrison James, Siphesihle November, Koto Ishihara and Heather Ogden as through-characters Crake, Jimmy, Oryx and Toby respectively. Hats off also to those assigned the unenviable task of depicting the Pigoons, the only hybridized creatures to make it from Atwood to the ballet.

The evening’s revered celebrity guest was apparently well pleased. The Toronto Star’s Deborah Dundas caught up with Atwood just before Act 3 when the author expressed her delight that the story had been rendered as a video game in Act 2.

“The dancing is beautiful,” said Atwood, adding in her wry way. “I guess we’ve got a hit on our hands.”

Let’s hope she’s right. If the company hopes “MADDADDAM” will become the blockbuster it deserves to be, it better pray that positive word-of-mouth and social media endorsements help sell the many seats still available for the remaining eight performances. “MADDADDAM” is just the kind of bold, imaginative assertion of classical ballet’s potential evolution that is most likely to woo new audiences and ensure the art form’s survival.

SHARE: