Ballet: Dracula & Social Drinks

Last Friday - well, one of the things London Museums from A-Z (LoMAZ) were talking about doing for their series of Dracula events was going to a ballet - and sure enough, there is a Dracula ballet in town! I'd heard it was good, with a classical soundtrack - and sure enough, when I checked, it was almost completely booked up. The only tickets left were last Tuesday evening - which I couldn't manage - and the matinees on Wednesday and Friday - so I took Friday off, and went to it that day! Ticket was emailed to me the day before. Couldn't persuade anyone to go with me though. Showing in the Palladium - I had to take the Second Circle to get the lowest price, and as legroom was reportedly tight, I made sure to get an aisle seat. Oh, and CT then advertised cheap tickets for Thursday's matinee.. ah well..

A cousin of mine was trying to get a hold of me on Thursday evening, but I was at the cinema and didn't get his message till afterwards, by which stage it was too late to call.. so I called him back on Friday instead, before I left. Oh Lordy, I thought he'd never stop talking.. even when we agreed to talk in more detail when I was next in Ireland, the conversation meandered on.. so I was rather worried I'd be late. Never fear, the buses were supportive, and I made it with 10 minutes to spare.. to see a long queue to get in. So I realised it wouldn't start on time - well, what does?! A helpful usher was yelling at us to get in the left-hand queue for the Second Circle. 

Up in the Second Circle, there's a long bar that you have to walk the length of to get from one side of the auditorium to the other - so I got a drink as I was passing. I see they have an innovative DIY pump system, where you can pour your own! Saves queueing at the bar, and saves having to wait for a free staff member - payment is by card, of course. You can get Burgundy - red or white - but I spotted a free staff member, and got my usual Sauvignon Blanc.

The steps in the Second Circle are quite large, so it required a bit of effort to clamber down to my seat - but I made it in good time, and got chatting to a nice lady beside me, whose first ballet it was and who, like me, had taken the day off to see it. As we remarked, the house looked sold out.. from my birds'-eye view, I could see fewer than a dozen empty seats in the whole place.. I did get the impression they were playing ominous music to set the scene, but you couldn't really hear over the babble of the crowd. Oh, legroom was pretty good, BTW.

Well, I have to hand it to them - the staging is excellent, the narrative clear. They start with Vlad the Impaler, the Christian knight battling the enemy, only to have news come to him of the murder of his beloved wife. Raging against God, he turns to evil and becomes a vampire..

The score is stunning - all the scary classical music you could hope for. As well as original music, it incorporates famous classical pieces by Bach, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, and Debussy - it's absolutely heavenly, the music soaring as the vampires swoop around, elevated by strings.

The first half sticks pretty close to the story, except that it has Jonathan and Mina marry before he sets off for Transylvania - and then she goes with him! So, a la Rocky Horror Picture Show, the newlyweds rock up at Dracula's castle and are duly besieged by demonic creatures, Dracula trying to take possession of Mina as the reincarnation of his wife. Well, it does help to contract the story, I guess. The second half, however, is not for the purists, as they completely rewrite the plot.. but what the hey, as I say, it looks and sounds terrific. According to someone in LoMAZ who saw it first, the programme is also worth a look - but they didn't seem to have any left when I was there! The show is now finished in the Palladium - showing in Sadler's Wells from Tuesday to next Sunday, but has been completely sold out for weeks.

Had booked to eat in the Shakespeare's Head (Soho) afterwards - but then London Social and Cultural Meetups (LSC) advertised social drinks for that evening in The Rugby Tavern, so I cancelled dinner and went to meet them instead, after the ballet - I could eat there. The bus got me there in no time, and I found them in the bar - another joined us later, and I had a scrumptious steak & Guinness pie as we chatted. Was too tired to blog that night, though.

See the next post for news of a walk and a film..