Review: Luca Silvestrini’s The Little Prince – the collective excitement was palpable and infectious

Over almost three decades, Silvestrini has developed an impressive reputation as a choreographer, having built an outstanding collection of pioneering works about pressing societal issues embellished by the knack of creating memorable visual spectacle from limited resources. The Little Prince was his first foray into creating a piece based upon an existing literary source rather than from his own fertile imagination about modern times and it was a great choice for initiating this new direction.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s surreal novella has the distinction of being both a cherished children’s story and a parable of a world in conflict, which is unfortunately as relevant today as when it was written, in 1942. The story was intensely personal to the author since, just like the aviator in his story, Saint-Exupéry had – eight years’ previously – crashed his aeroplane in the Libyan Desert. He survived for four days with little to eat or drink and experienced hallucinations, although he didn’t live long enough to elaborate on his mental mirage since, in July 1944, he and his aeroplane vanished somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea.

His disappearance came barely a year after the US publication of his masterpiece, which was banned in France until the downfall of the Vichy regime and published posthumously. Saint-Exupéry never knew about the enormous success of his little novella, which has sold over 140 million copies in so many languages that it is reported to be the most translated work ever published (excepting the Bible).

Five years ago, I wrote that it would be difficult to imagine any performer articulating Saint-Exupéry’s title character as well as its originator, Faith Prendergast, since she was the very image of The Little Prince. She had been pencilled in for this revival but had to bow out due to conflicting commitments. Step forward Mette Nilsen, a Norwegian dancer, who came from the substitute’s bench to epitomise the youthful ebullience and vivacious inquiry of The Little Prince with her perfect physical presence enhanced by tousled blonde hair and Yann Seabra’s military costume of a long blue velvet coat with gold epaulets, evoking the uniforms of the Wicked Witch of the West’s guards in The Wizard of Oz.

A childlike simplicity embellished Nilsen’s movement style, climbing onto spherical asteroids, and rolling joyfully across the stage, all performed with a comfortable grasp of her spoken text. Simon Palmer performed charismatically in Saint-Exupéry’s autobiographical role as the unnamed aviator, who is the work’s principal narrator. Incidentally, the task of meeting the challenge of the plane crash is accomplished through the simple device of a paper aeroplane.

The two principals were supported superbly by Donna Lennard (the only returning cast member from five years ago) and Karl Fagerlund Brekke who, between them, portrayed the several strange inhabitants of the asteroids visited on The Little Prince’s galactic travels. Not only did they conquer the diverse acting challenges of swapping roles so quickly but also the (offstage) gymnastics of frequent costume changes.

Lennard is a wonder as the vain king who rules over no subjects, delivering lines with expressiveness and humour as a head protruding from within a box, and then displaying further theatrical versatility variously as a snake, the mysterious Rose tree and a businessman who counts the stars in order to “own” them (rather than appreciate their beauty). Fagerlund Brekke is equally effective as the fox, the lonely geographer who knows nothing about exploration because he has never left his tiny asteroid and the lamplighter who routinely – and comically – follows orders to continually light and extinguish his lamp.

Here again, Seabra’s costumes were never less than outstanding representations of these extraordinary characters; and similarly, his set designs resonated with the spirit of Saint-Exupéry’s illustrations. Frank Moon’s original music provided a fascinating score that is similarly in keeping with a captivating story that clearly continues to appeal to children of every age. My assessment, of five years ago, that Silvestrini had fashioned a striking theatrical experience in perfect harmony with this timeless story remains undiminished by this return engagement with a new but nonetheless multi-talented cast. The children adored it and so did I.

Graham Watts

Graham Watts is a freelance writer and dance critic. He writes for The Spectator, Tanz, Shinshokan Dance Magazine (Japan), Ballet Magazine (Romania), BachTrack and the Hong Kong International Arts Festival and has previously written for the Sunday Express, Dancing Times, Dance Europe, DanceTabs, London Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival and Pointe magazine (USA).  He has also written the biography of Daria Klimentová (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and contributed chapters about the work of Akram Khan to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet and on Shobana Jeyasingh for the third edition of Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers.

He is Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards and regularly lectures on dance writing and criticism at The Royal Academy of Dance, The Place and (until the war) for Balletristic in Kyiv.  He was a nominee for the Dance Writing Award in the 2018 One Dance UK Awards and was appointed OBE in 2008.