Review: ‘Atonement’ is Marston’s finest ballet to date
Lauren Warnecke, Chicago Tribune
Review: 4 stars
Can a person make up for the harm they have caused?
This is the central question of “Atonement,” Ian McEwan’s celebrated 2001 novel turned Oscar-winning film, now turned ballet.
“Atonement” is the latest narrative work tackled by bibliophile choreographer Cathy Marston, who previously set “Jane Eyre” and “Of Mice and Men” on the Joffrey Ballet. “Atonement” is the first full-length ballet she’s created from scratch for the Joffrey, and a first-ever staged adaptation of the novel. A co-production with Ballet Zurich, it premiered in Switzerland this April; the North American debut with the Joffrey Ballet runs through Oct. 27 at the Lyric Opera House.
“Atonement” opens on Briony Tallis (danced Thursday by Yumi Kanazawa), a precocious teenager first seen daydreaming in her bedroom with legs intertwined around a simple wooden chair. She’s the youngest of three siblings — far younger than her brother Leon (Xavier Núñez) and sister Cecelia (Amanda Assucena). An aspiring choreographer, Briony recruits three cousins visiting the Tallis’ palatial English estate to perform in the ballet she’s prepared for the family, friends and distinguished guests. Among them is Robbie Turner (Alberto Velazquez), son of the Tallis’ housekeeper and a de facto brother to Briony, plus Leon’s friend Paul Marshall (Jonathan Dole).
On a sweltering summer day in 1935, Briony becomes entangled in a confusing series of events. She catches Robbie and Cecelia mid-coitus after having seen a provocative, profane letter penned by Robbie detailing his desire for her sister. And in a late-night search for her two younger cousins, Briony encounters the third, Lola, being sexually assaulted. A spoiler alert in the story: The perpetrator is Marshall, but Briony identifies Robbie as Lola’s rapist, sending him to jail and stripping her sister of her imagined future.
It’s intentionally never clear if headstrong Briony falsely identifies Robbie by choice or accident, but she spends the rest of her life regretting it and witnessing the ripple effect of one bad decision on an entire family. That ambiguity courses through the novel and this ballet — with the viewer never really knowing what is real and what is imagined. As Briony seeks to atone for her actions, the question remains who that apology is intended to serve.
Marston approached composer Laura Rossi’s enthralling, cinematic score as a container rather than a blueprint, neither strictly following nor wholly ignoring it. Rossi’s music is expertly expressed by the Lyric Opera’s orchestra, under Scott Speck’s music direction.
In addition to the score, “Atonement’s” pièce de résistance is Michael Levine’s exquisite stage design, the centerpiece of which is a panoramic backdrop hung on a track to move the setting from Briony’s idyllic English estate to the gloomy battlefields of World War II. It’s gorgeous, but also solves an enormous challenge: staging a novel that spans decades and multiple locales. A few bits and bobs — chairs and beds, plus a ballet barre and a few domestic lighting instruments that descend from the rafters — help further define where we are, sparing the audience from clunky scene changes and settling instead on something that resembles deftly turning the pages of McEwan’s gripping novel.
Read the full Chicago Tribune article here.