Demiballet

By Martha Duffy

How can we tell the dancers from the dance? was the question that Yeats posed. In the case of the Australian Ballet's new version of Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow, the difference is all too readily apparent. The show, now at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center and scheduled to play in New York and London, is opulently and ebulliently staged; it makes a refreshingly short, diverting summer evening at the theater. But it is not really a ballet. The dancers move through production numbers stitched together by recitatives of mime. They smile brilliantly, toss back their heads and wave champagne glasses. Often there is not much else for them to do. A question recurs with nagging frequency: Why aren't these people singing?

Adapting classic Viennese operetta to dance has been the dream of Sir Robert Helpmann, 67, the Australian Ballet's director for 50 years. The idea is a seductive one. The operetta, of course, has dancing in it. The score is filled with mellow waltzes and Hungarian folk tunes, complete with mandolins and castanets. The trap for a choreographer lies in Lehar's melodies, which enhance the voice like exquisite garments that are no longer made. No steps danced to Vilia are satisfying, because memory hears a soprano singing.

Helpmann staged The Merry Widow in part because he felt that in Dame Margot Fonteyn he had the ideal leading lady. He was her first partner in the late '30s when, as a teenager, she danced classic roles at the old Sadler's Wells Ballet. Dame Margot is 57 now. She per forms, she says modestly, because people still ask her to. She is, in fact, one of the great international box office draws in show business. Audiences who pay to see her as the wealthy widow of Pontevedro will get their money's worth in her warm, elegant presence and the effortless charm of her acting. To go hunting in the back of the mind -- as one does for the words to Vilia -- for the ease and celerity that once made her dancing so youthful, is to be saddened. Dame Margot's flashing dark eyes and her smile offer a promise she can no longer deliver.

Reckless Waltzes. The evening does have some amusing nonsense and high spirits. The sets and costumes by Desmond Heeley are not only clever but look notably fresh. The music, ar ranged and conducted by John Lanch-berry, sounds like a serious ensemble rather than the pickup assortment that often accompanies dance. The Australians are a very handsome company. The girls are among the prettiest dancers around; the men are tall and athletic. John Meehan, who plays Count Danilo, the rich widow's reluctant lover, is positively coltish. He carries off the evening with blithe bravado, swinging Dame Margot around in reckless waltzes or flinging her high with one-arm lifts. Meehan will never be the partner Help mann was, but he embodies the insouciance that is the production's most en dearing quality. This Merry Widow is not what it aspires to be -- an evocation in dance of old Vienna-- but it makes an amiable evening.

Martha Duffy

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