Playhouse Theatre, QPAC
May 27, 2018 at 2pm

★★★★☆ The Firebird

Queensland Ballet’s latest production Carmen & The Firebird features two works that are so far apart choreographically, dramatically and emotionally that you simply have to give them separate star ratings.

The program begins with Liam Scarlett’s ravishing production of The Firebird. The British choreographer, now 32, who has been Artist in Residence at The Royal Ballet in London since late 2012, joined QB as Artistic Associate in 2017. Brisbane audiences have so far seen his delightful A Midsummer Night’s Dream and a shorter work called No Man’s Land, created in 2014 for English National Ballet as part of its commemoration of World War I.

Jack Lister and Lucy Green in The Firebird. Photograph © David Kelly

Now comes his thrilling version of The Firebird, which premiered at the Norwegian Royal Ballet in 2013. Scarlett takes the famous work – first seen in 1910 at Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris, with choreography by Michel Fokine to Stravinsky’s brilliant music – and gives it a fresh, modern twist.

Working with designer Jon Bausor and lighting designer James Farncombe, he sets the piece in a dark, nightmarish, Gothic world with...