Review: Victoria, Northern Ballet, Leeds Grand Theatre

AFTER Dame Judi Dench’s post-Albert Victoria and the three television series with Jenna Coleman’s young Victoria, here is a ballet theatre biopic spanning Victoria old and young and in between.

Leeds company Northern Ballet constructs this world premiere around a life of passion, tragedy and fierce devotion, as told in Queen Victoria’s diaries.

Here, the one who is “not amused” is her youngest daughter Beatrice, who, on discovering Victoria’s diaries revealed a life so fascinating, she felt compelled to try to re-write history.

This is not so much a story torn from the pages of a diary, as one with parts of that story torn out... except that choreographer Cathy Marston has a delightful way of showing just enough of the fascinating bits before Beatrice puts a stop to them, rather like that priest on his weekly brief to cut out the kisses from the films being shown at Cinema Paradiso.

The performance begins with Victoria (danced exquisitely by Abigail Prudames) in the closing pages of her life, before we travel back to her “inappropriate” relationship with John Brown (Mindi Kulashe, thrilling, muscular, and all too brief).

Prince Albert (an elegant Joseph Taylor) then becomes the hub around which the wheel of Marston’s work whirls, with its passion shocking Beatrice and the production line of nine babies bringing amusement through choreographic repetition at increasing speed.

Amid the discordant scratching of a quill, and the feverish, ant-like movement of an army of librarians constantly moving Victoria’s diaries on and off shelves, Pippa Moore’s Older Princess Beatrice does her darnedest to be the controlling editor, but love and grief will out, and so will choreography that makes wonderful use of the ensemble while giving Prudames’ Victoria some unusual, angular but beautiful feats of balance.

Aided by Philip Fenney’s music and Steffen Aarfing’s designs, Marston’s Victoria is even better than her Jane Eyre.

Charles Hutchinson