Last Updated on June 26, 2026
ENB’s Signature Classic Debuts at the Royal Albert Hall
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
Kenneth MacMillan’s The Sleeping Beauty, entrusted in the UK to English National Ballet (ENB), is a glorious spectacle full of meticulous classical dancing – it follows closely Petipa’s 19th-century original – a cogently told fairy tale that pits good against evil, and an apotheosis where love triumphs. All this set to an eloquent, courtly and intensely romantic score by Tchaikovsky, which will echo in your mind long after you’ve left the theatre.
After a long national tour, ENB has brought The Sleeping Beauty to the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) for a short, compact end-of-season residency, which copes admirably with the hall’s peculiar conditions.
When he created his Sleeping Beauty in 1987, MacMillan commissioned sets and costumes from his regular collaborator Nicholas Georgiadis, who produced his trademark sumptuous, detailed and extensively researched designs. For the ballet’s current outing at the RAH, the costumes, inspired by the 17th century for the first half and the 18th for the second, have survived untouched, or rather, spruced up, so they look sparkingly fresh (more on those in a moment); but it would be impossible to fit the sets onto a stage with no proscenium and no wings.
The solution was to create virtual sets to be projected onto a large backdrop and on the stage itself (augmented to jut out into the arena), to frame and place the action, as well as offering their own kind of magic. To that end, ENB worked with designer Charlotte MacMillan (the choreographer’s daughter) and video specialists Northouse Creative Ltd.
At all the crucial moments, the projections work admirably. Take the scene where the broody Prince Désiré is shown a vision of the beautiful sleeping princess, who awaits beyond the forest and the heavenly clouds.
Or take the arrival in court of the evil fairy Carabosse with her retinue of malignant goblins, ready to avenge her omission from the guest list for baby Aurora’s christening with a devastating curse.
At other times, the projections provide perfectly adequate backdrops that place the action without distracting from it, for example, in Aurora’s 16th birthday party in the palace gardens, or, perhaps even more effectively, in the Act III ballroom wedding celebrations.
All this frames dancing of high quality from both soloists and ensemble, bar a hesitation or two and an unfortunate fumbled lift that wasn’t; but it’s live performance, these things happen even to the best, and while it may well have wrecked those dancers’ evening, it certainly didn’t ruin mine.
In the first of four casts, Princess Aurora was danced by Emma Hawes, Prince Désiré by Aitor Arrieta, while the very young Anri Sugiura gave us a charming, assured and faultless performance as the Lilac Fairy, and company veteran James Streeter was an imposing Carabosse, by turns threatening and very camp in his Elizabethan red wig and voluminous black dress and ruff.
Emma Hawes is an uncommonly elegant classical dancer, showing perfect coordination between steely leg work and soft upper body and arms. Her Aurora is suitably girlish in her Act I birthday celebrations, where she acquitted herself well of the fiendishly difficult Rose Adagio partnered by four suitors, the extravagantly dressed and moustachioed foreign princes. No longer a giddy girl, she projected a dignified, regal demeanour in the Act III wedding scene.
Aitor Arrieta was a technically impeccable, if not immensely expressive prince and a very good partner. There was chemistry between him and Hawes, and they made short work of demanding choreography, offering a perfect sequence of three fish dives
Coming back to the costumes, their gold-accented palette felt somewhat muted, and I wondered whether Georgiadis had deliberately opted for softness in order to better match the costumes to his very heavy, full sets. It’s just a thought – on the whole, I liked the soft visuals very much.
The English National Ballet Philharmonic, ensconced behind the stage (we caught a glimpse of them during final bows), was conducted by ENB music director Maria Seletskaja with characteristic crispness, giving an account of Tchaikovsky’s score as the composer himself might have wished.
ENB, The Sleeping Beauty is at the Royal Albert Hall 25 – 28 June. Evenings at 7.30 pm, mats Fri & Sat at 2.30 pm. Sun at 2 pm and 7pm
Dur.: 2 hours 40 mins inc one interval. Tickets: £55 – £120
Royal Albert Hall
Kensington Gore
London SW7 2AP
For more on MacMillan’s The Sleeping Beauty and its RAH run read our interview with artistic director Aaron S Watkin
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