Mayerling remade — how a classic ballet gained a new lease of life

In 1978 the British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, determined to drag ballet out of fairyland, gave Covent Garden a powerful three-act history lesson: the last eight years of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary and his murder/suicide with his mistress at the hunting lodge at Mayerling. Strong meat, but a lasting success. This year alone, Mayerling will be danced in Warsaw, Budapest, Stuttgart, Paris and Covent Garden, but this challenging work had never been seen in another UK theatre — until now.

Deborah, Lady MacMillan, custodian of her husband’s work since his death in 1992, is determined that his ballets reach a wider audience. When Christopher Hampson, artistic director of Scottish Ballet since 2012, approached her about touring a reworked Mayerling with a smaller troupe, she didn’t hesitate: “I feel very strongly that the British taxpayer has paid for these works and unless people can afford to come to London to see them they miss out,” she says.

Deborah MacMillan, together with Hampson and seasoned MacMillan director Gary Harris, set about editing Gillian Freeman’s original scenario while Martin Yates reorchestrated John Lanchbery’s clever collage of Franz Liszt for an orchestra of 55 (rather than 80). Between them, they created The Scandal at Mayerling, which premiered in Glasgow last week.

Major scenes — the Emperor’s birthday, the shooting party — have been cut entirely, which, together with the loss of the second internal, shaves nearly an hour from the running time. “I prefer to say it’s been refocused rather than losing anything,” says Hampson. “I remember David Wall saying that when he was creating Mayerling with Kenneth he forgot it was a full-company piece because he was just locked in the studio with Lynn Seymour, creating those iconic pas de deux.” At the heart of the piece, he says, “there’s always a chamber work.”

Cutting to the chase in this complex story carried several risks. One was that the Prince’s descent into madness would be little more than a fruity case history without its dynastic context; the other, on a purely practical level, was that this infamously arduous leading role would become undanceable without any breathing space.

In fact, the story flows fairly happily without the missing scenes (it would be a surprise if other midscale companies didn’t express an interest) and Hampson’s Rudolfs are coping well with the workload. The Royal Ballet’s Ryoichi Hirano, who will be guesting with the company, was pleasantly surprised. “He says it’s much easier than the full length,” says Deborah MacMillan, “because you don’t have those periods when you are just sitting around on stage and getting a little bit cold.”

The production has been completely redesigned. Elin Steele’s economical use of props — a chaise longue, a bed, a piano — transforms her standing set of red panelling and skewed chandeliers into the various settings, aided by Hayley Egan’s evocative video projections. Paul Pyant’s lighting gives a claustrophobic heat to the interiors and guides the eye during the frenetic tavern scene.

Steele’s costumes are handsome but the Hungarian officers, led by a dazzling Jerome Barnes, look a lot like bellboys, and the women’s bustled frocks are often too long and literal. The original Nicholas Georgiadis gowns managed to suggest volume without muffling the leg- and footwork.

The opening night was strongly danced and played but got off to a slightly scary start as Evan Loudon struggled with Rudolf’s killer adagio during the wedding party. Miraculously, the Royal Ballet-trained Australian conquered his nerves to deliver an impressive debut. Rudolf’s duets with wife, mother and mistresses each have a different character, from the abusive cat-and-mouse pairwork of his wedding night to the no-holds-barred couplings with his doomed teenage soulmate Mary Vetsera (an intelligent and fearless Sophie Martin). The steps are tricky enough, but it isn’t just a question of joining the dots; Rudolf is dancing in an altered state — drunk, drugged, tormented by the agonies of syphilis — and Loudon took care to let us know this, infusing each exchange with mounting despair.

Given the success of the experiment, one has to ask which other ballets could be distilled to their essence. Hampson is reluctant to speculate: “I’d have to think about that.” Romeo and Juliet? “Romeo is fascinating,” he says, “because, again, it’s a chamber work . . . ”

Touring to Inverness, Aberdeen and Edinburgh to May 28, scottishballet.co.uk