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Coliseum, LondonEven if the drama disappoints in parts, the music and dancing in Tamara Rojo’s brave, inventive take on the 19th-century, will-she-won’t-she love story is a delightIt’s common enough in theatre and opera to preserve a classic text and entirely reconceive its production; less so in ballet. English National Ballet director Tamara Rojo has excellent reasons for a new take on Marius Petipa’s 19th-century Raymonda, an orientalist crusader story of a virtuous maid, noble knight and evil Saracen. She shifts the action to the Crimean war, where a young Englishwoman has followed her soldier fiance, and discovers a sense of vocation in nursing. It sounds like a canny move, setting the scene for a Victorian costume drama about a woman’s choices, inspired by the spirit of national treasure Florence Nightingale – perfect BBC primetime material.Of course, score, sets, style, roles and steps had to be reworked to fitthe rethink, but never mind purism: does it work?In parts, but not as a whole. The highlight is Raymonda’s dream scene.It harnesses the essence of balletic magic – a stage flooded withmoonlight and dancers in gauzy white – but peoples this traditionallyfemale realm with both men and women, their ordered ranks, crossing runsand sighing spirals engendering an almost spiritual sense of the tenderwith the wounded. You believe that in nursing, Raymonda really has seena higher purpose.But nursing, and indeed the war itself, are marginal to the ballet –sometimes literally, as when bouncy soldiers and smiley wenches hog thestage while casualties and carers remain discreetly on the sidelines.True, the figure of Sister Clemence (Precious Adams) is an intermittentcall to conscience, but Raymonda (Shiori Kase) is more exercised byanother dilemma: should she choose good English soldier John de Bryan(Isaac Hernández) – husband material, basically – or flashy Turkishambassador Abdur Rahman (Jeffrey Cirio)?Raymonda is at the London Coliseum until 23 January Continue reading...