Creature review, Sadler’s Wells Theatre: English National Ballet and Akram Khan make a brilliant match

New production is a superb retelling of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’

Jeffrey Cirio in ‘Creature' (Laurent Liotardo)

English National Ballet and Akram Khan make a brilliant match: the ballet company and the contemporary choreographer unlock new qualities in each other. After Khan’s elemental Dust and his intense reworking of Giselle, his potent new Creature takes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a starting point. But it spins into something new, a very individual story of loneliness, space flight, regimentation and loss.

Shelley’s novel ends with the Creature alone in the Arctic. Khan’s protagonist starts there, conscripted into a military unit preparing for a space mission. Tim Yip’s stark set is an enclosed shack with towering, rickety walls, almost as bleak as the icy wastes beyond. It’s a claustrophobic setting for a tight-wound drama that never lets up.

Vincenzo Lamagna’s new score layers a live orchestra with recorded sound, including the voice of actor Andy Serkis. We hear the promise, or threat, that the heavens will become part of man’s world. As he listens, the Creature morphs from one identity to another, different images shining out: animalistic moves, a courtly pose, a soldier’s drill with a gun.

Khan’s storytelling isn’t linear. He piles up themes and imagery into a monumental whole, with terrific performances from his cast. Jeffrey Cirio’s superb Creature pines for Erina Takahashi’s delicate Marie, a drudge with a core of steely resistance. Stina Quagebeur’s imposing Doctor tests and prods him, pushing him to his limits.

Khan’s military is inspired by Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, a place of hierarchy and deadening labour. Fabian Reimair’s swaggering Major stirs up and exploits his troops. The soldiers group themselves behind him, like the flowing lines of a cloak, then leap ahead like a pack of hunting dogs.

The cast of ‘Creature' (Laurent Liotardo)

Gestures are packed with meaning, different perspectives on power and fear. A finger pointing upwards evokes the space mission, but it comes with layers of ecstasy, cynicism, or conformity. To look beyond this cramped space is both idealistic and brutal, an imperialistic impulse shot through with human loneliness and yearning.

Khan builds those contradictions into surging, muscular dance. Caught between the Major and the Creature, Marie reaches upwards in a dream of escape. It’s when the Creature recognises her hopes that their duet catches fire. Picking up her broom, he turns it first into an imagined space rocket, then into a platform to lift her up, up, up.

‘Creature’ runs at Sadler’s Wells Theatre until 2 October