The Judas Tree/Song of the Earth, Royal Opera House, London, review: They’re very uneasy bedfellows

The Royal Ballet keeps trying with Kenneth MacMillan’s ‘The Judas Tree’, but this is a ballet that should have stayed buried

Edward Watson helps to lead a tireless cast in ‘The Judas Tree’ (Bill Cooper/ROH)

Anniversaries are often a chance to disinter and re-examine an artist’s neglected works. The Royal Ballet keep trying with Kenneth MacMillan’s The Judas Tree, but this is one that should have stayed buried. The choreographer’s last work is a mess of turgid symbolism, clunky realism and graphic sexual violence. In this double bill, it’s followed by English National Ballet in MacMillan’s much-loved Song of the Earth. They’re very uneasy bedfellows.

Marking 25 years since the choreographer’s death, Kenneth MacMillan: a National Celebration has opened up his work to other companies, who have danced his ballets both at home and in shared bills like this one. It’s created a fine atmosphere of collaboration and discovery, but The Judas Tree is a case of misguided loyalty.

Created in 1992, the ballet is set on a modern-day building site. A lone woman taunts and entices the foreman and his crew, who respond with brutish violence. It ends in a gang rape, which one man tries and fails to stop. The woman dies, the foreman hangs himself.

MacMillan could be acute in exploring psychological damage, the roots of horrifying acts. The Judas Tree drops all that in favour of muddled religious images – a Judas kiss, the woman draped in a sheet like Mary Magdalene. The foreman’s crew pose like Athena poster boys: dated and shirtless. The woman cycles through virgin-whore clichés, so busy being an archetype that she has no identity. It doesn’t help that Jock McFadyen’s scaffolding set is so literal, leaving these non-characters stranded in a naturalistic landscape. Lauren Cuthbertson, Thiago Soares and Edward Watson lead a tireless cast, but it’s a grim, pointless exercise.

Song of the Earth, MacMillan’s 1965 setting of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, is an abstract symbolic drama, but also a very personal one. Its leading woman is the actor in her own story, making her own choices as she faces life and death. In this performance, Erina Takahashi touchingly shows both her courage and her vulnerability. I love the moment when she looks over her shoulder, not quite fearfully, and the way her gliding line of bourrées feels like an outpouring of emotion.

English National Ballet acquired Song of the Earth for this anniversary season. They’re still finding their way into the ballet’s curving poses and weighted steps. Jeffrey Cirio and Isaac Hernandez partner Takahashi tenderly, but need bolder character in earlier scenes. Senri Kou brings a bright, youthful quality to the third song, and Precious Adams stands out for her beautiful flow of movement.