Simon Hale with a further review of the BRB’s current production.

Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production of Coppélia is staged in a middle European-like fairytale world that is beautifully evoked in its Peter Farmer-designed sets.

An old town square bathed in a golden hue with a landscape backdrop that seems to extend forever provides the setting for a story of mystery, mischief and magic.
Young lovers Swanilda and Franz, danced by the supremely matched Momoka Hirata and César Morales, are diverted by what appears to them to be a pretty girl that the eccentric toymaker Dr Coppélius has wheeled on to his balcony.

High spirited and with a roving eye, there’s more to Franz’s reaction than mere curiosity as Swanilda looks on jealously – even though Coppélia is only a doll.

While Swanilda pursues her intended, they get over their petty squabbling with some flawless and thrilling dance turns from a first-rate pair of principals.
Hirata not only dances with delightful delicacy but she acts her role with perfect comic timing, while Morales oozes fluidity, personality and charm.

The lovers, like the audience, can’t wait to see what is inside the doctor’s house, where his work has clearly been keeping the locals intrigued.

There’s more than a hint of the dark arts as Swanilda and friends sneak into the abode, hands clasped together nervously in a chain. The last dancer crossing herself on the doorstep is one of the many comic touches in this magnificent show.

But that’s not before the corps de ballet entertain us with joyous dancing perfectly synchronised with the wonderfully melodic Delibes score.

The dark interior of Dr Coppélius’ workshop certainly has a touch of sorcery about it with its bubbling solutions, giant book of spells, and walls lined with life-size mechanical dolls that he has been trying to bring to life.

Michael O’Hare excels as the dotty doctor not least in his reaction to the female intruders and then the arrival of a lustful Franz through the window. The point where Franz is chased around the workshop being spanked on the bottom by Coppélius is one of the funniest in the production.

O’Hare wonderfully portrays Coppélius’s deceit in drugging Franz so that he can use his spirit to bring life to Coppélia – and his despair when he realises that he has been duped by Swanilda into thinking he has been successful in his aim.

But in the spirit of all fairytales there’s a happy ending with some supremely danced divertissements centred on the gift of a bell by the local duke to the town church, which brings everyone blissfully together.

It is now 20 years since Sir Peter Wright first staged this BRB production based on the choreography of Marius Petipa and Enrico Cecchetti, after it was created for the Paris Opera in 1870, but it still rings as joyfully and sweetly as ever.

Coppélia is in production at Birmingham Hippodrome until Saturday, February 28th.