Who said ballet had to be boring? MADDADDAM, inspired by Margerat Attwood’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy of the same name, has a plot to rival a blockbuster movie. Sure, capturing three complicated dystopian novels, and all the world building within them, is a lot to take on for a 2.5 hour ballet. Somehow, Wayne McGregor pulls it off.
Now stay with me here; in Act One we meet Snowman, a dishevelled survivor of a major pandemic, dressed in rags and a battered red baseball cap. Snowman, AKA Jimmy, lives among the mysterious blue humanoid ‘Crakers’, who move about the stage like organisms in a harmonious ecosystem. Snowman believes himself to be the last human alive. We encounter other survivors too; the rifle-wielding Toby, who battles the hideous pig-human hybrid monsters (pigoons); Ren, a former stripper; and the thuggish Painballers, a gang of violent criminals.
The most important part though is a nostalgic dream sequence, where we are introduced to Crake, Jimmy’s childhood best-friend-turned-creepy-Steve-Jobs-super-scientist, and the love of Jimmy’s life, Oryx, a mysterious but pure-hearted former sex worker hired as an assistant to Crake, played by a buoyant and beautiful Fumi Kaneko. When Kaneko is on stage, dressed in a silky blue dressing gown, all eyes are drawn to her. Her deft movements give off an ethereality that others simply cannot. Joseph Sissen’s Snowman/Jimmy is a fantastic counterpart. His effortless performance is packed with strength and heart, and the chemistry is palpable in their tender duets. Throughout the ballet, the interactions between these three characters are the most beautiful. The triangle of their love is marked out expertly as the trio weave themselves together through elegant lifts, attitude turns and McGregor’s signature standing splits (there’s plenty of them in this production).
In the second act a video game is used to tell us Snowman, Orxy and Crake’s backstory. Dancers donning plain white t-shirts and white briefs dart about the stage like errant pixels on a screen, as a transparent screen at the front of the stage types out the game instructions in a slime green computer font. It’s a bit complicated, but a brilliant spectacle, especially when things get taken up an octane. There’s a moment when terrifying corporate soldiers clad in chrome body suits (costume designer Gareth Pugh nods to Thierry Mugler here) charge towards us on the screen, their torsos taking up the whole ROH stage, which is actually pretty scary.
Complicated storyline aside, this production is bolstered tenfold by Max Richter’s powerhouse score, which has everything from sentimental strings, to booming, jagged techno, and eerie ambient noises. We Not I’s simple, futuristic set, aided by fantastic projections, also does a lot of the legwork in turning this into such a cinematic piece of work. Between the acts it goes from a single rotating Death Star of an orb, to a silver metal scaffolding structure, to a singular piece of material that hangs above the stage like a sail. And if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the outlandish plot and number of characters, don’t worry. None of this would have been possible to portray in ballet form without the help of the handy narration, which is partly voiced by Tilda Swinton.
I can’t lie: it probably helps to have read the books if you’re going to wrap your head around the plot of MADDADDAM. And in the name of clarity it might have been a good idea for McGregor to do away with some of the side characters like Ren and Toby. Nonetheless, there’s enough entertaining, and moving, spectacle here that you’ll still be able to sit back and enjoy the ride.