Manon – review

Kenneth MacMillan's Manon, which had its premiere in 1974, is set in one of the most decadent periods in French history: the regency of Philippe d'Orléans, which followed the death from gangrene of Louis XIV in 1715. The stench of corruption permeates the ballet, while its titular heroine, danced on last Thursday's opening night by Sarah Lamb, has few redeeming features. For Manon Lescaut, as for society at large, sex is currency, pure and simple. Inconveniently she falls for the handsome but unworldly Des Grieux (Rupert Pennefather), whose naivety will ultimately destroy her.

Throughout the ballet, Manon is manipulated both physically and psychologically by men. By her brother (Thiago Soares), a louche and drunken half-pay officer; by the wealthy Monsieur GM (Christopher Saunders), to whom he pimps her; and by Des Grieux himself. The choreography by which MacMillan expresses these tortuous inter-relationships assumes the rococo style of the day. Scalloped, swirling and ornate, it sees the ever-pliant Manon as an object of grande-luxe sensuality. In the ballet's most chilling sequence we see her manoeuvred into GM's embrace with incestuous lubriciousness by her brother. Later, at GM's soirée, we see her lifted into arching overhead displays, examined with connoisseurial lecherousness, fondled, tasted and fetishised.

The unsettling thing about this ballet is that it endows us with the same viewpoint. Like it or not, we become voyeurs of Manon's degradation. And Lamb, kittenish and porcelain-pale, draws us in with a brilliantly calculating performance. MacMillan's steps hold no fears for her; the real performance is in her eyes. We see her confident delight in Des Grieux's adoration, her wide-eyed disbelief at the furs and jewels with which GM endows her, her almost instant suppression of her qualms at his reptilian lust, and her purringly sensuous acceptance of the attentions of the "gentlemen" at the soirée (among whom a sneeringly disdainful Jonathan Watkins is a memorable presence). And so winning is Lamb, we forgive it all.

Pennefather's Des Grieux wins our sympathy, although the character, as drawn by MacMillan, is often exasperating. On first encountering Manon his reaction is an introspective adagio, much of it facing away from her. Behold the tautness of my thighs, he seems to be saying. Note the elegance of my arabesque. Given to gesture rather than decisive action, his reaction to a crisis is an anguished flurry of pirouettes. When all is lost, however, like many an Englishman before him, he's perfectly splendid.