Swept up in dance
Festival Ballet brings Chris Van Allsburg's fairy tale to life in
The Widow's Broom
The Providence Journal
Saturday, October 23, 2004
By Bryan Rourke, Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE - We know a nutcracker can come to life and sustain a ballet. How about a broom?

The answer's dancing on stage at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. The Widow's Broom, Festival Ballet Providence's world premiere production of Chris Van Allsburg's book, opened last night, and sweeps away doubt.

The two-act, two-hour show celebrates anthropomorphic fantasy. A broom becomes a man.

No, it's not as natural or believable as a miniature wooden nutcracking man becoming a full-size dancing one. This requires transmogrification. The magical broom acquires limbs, and a head, and a new owner.

A witch abandons her broom. A widow takes it in. Nasty neighbors attack. The widow protects it. Good conquers evil. It's a fairy tale happy ending.

The Broom is Gleb Lyamenkoff. He wears a beige body suit, which from the knees down is lined to represent his bristles. His body is narrow and lean, fitting for a broom. But his movements are not stiff, but fluid.

The Broom does the bulk of the dancing. And when the Broom dances with the Widow, at the end, it's quite nice, and notable -- balletic, comic and athletic. They move across the stage, on a chair and over a table.

Leticia Guerrero is the Widow. As with past Festival Ballet productions, her stage presence is strong. She compels attention. Her dance, body language and facial expressions are nuanced and communicative. Generally, her character comes across as cute.

For the longest time, the Widow resists the Broom's requests to dance. Finally, she relents. This is after her meanspirited nextdoor neighbors, the Spiveys, played by Mark Harootian, Elizabeth Jessee and Caitlin Novero with somewhat humorous false bravado, are sent packing by the Broom.

Okay, so most ballets end with a woman in a man's arms, not a broom's bristles. That's fine.

Sleeping Beauty this isn't; nor is it Nutcracker. The difference is not merely the absence of Prince Charming, but a lack of lavishness. That's by design.

The sets, by Eugene Lee of Providence, a three-time Tony Award winning designer, are sparse, at times even austere. The action occurs inside or outside the widow's cottage. There's a table and chairs, and movable stick walls -- which move a lot.

The audience sees set changes, and, perhaps, the people behind the moving walls. For some, that may mar the mood of suspended disbelief.

A dozen witches

The most visually compelling component of the show occurs early in the first act. A dozen witches, led by Karla Kovatch, circle the stage, buzzing about on brooms before a night sky with a thousand stars and one big orange moon.

They wear what you would expect and want from witches: black -- shoes, dresses and pointed hats. Ka Yan Kan, the costumer designer, kept with tradition.

The witches move to forceful and suspenseful music composed by Aleksandra Vrebalov of New York, and performed by an 11-member orchestra conducted by Edward Markward. But scary isn't the overriding tone of the show.

Throughout most of the dance, choreographer Viktor Plotnikov has put in numerous and subtle playful touches. When the nasty neighbors come face-to-shaft with the supposed ghost of the broom, their knees shake and hands quiver in exaggerated ways.

The Widow's Broom story line builds slowly and might benefit from some tightening, which could propel the plot and provide greater tension. The show doesn't always sweep you away, but does deserve praise.

Mihailo Djuric, Festival Ballet's artistic director, should be commended for his ambitious staging of an original, full-length ballet, for which choreography, costumes, sets and music were all created from scratch. The story, however, had a starting point: Van Allsburg's children's book The Widow's Broom.

Having very few characters, it doesn't naturally lend itself to a ballet. So Van Allsburg made modifications. He introduced villagers into the book's village. Instead of one witch, he made many. And the Widow, who lives alone in the book, has a son. He's played by Emily Bromberg, who dresses like Oliver Twist and moves with a childlike innocence.

Nice touch

In the book, there's a fire into which the Broom is to be thrown. Here, it's two colorfully costumed dancers, Jennifer Ricci and Davide Vitorino, who consume the broom with fiery movement. It's a nice touch.

The show features two sets of alternating principal dancers, a marriage of many collaborating artists and a hope that someday a broom can become as much a holiday tradition as a nutcracker.

Festival Ballet Providence performs The Widow's Broom at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, 1 Avenue of the Arts, 7:30 p.m. today and 2:30 p.m. tomorrow. For tickets, $16 to $51, call (800) 919-6272 or (401) 353-1129.