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Precious is a new-style weepie but one that is much more bracing than depressing
Precious
Theatre
Ian McKellen is captivating throughout. He delights in the play’s gallows humour, yet is also maudlin and poignant
Waiting for Godot
Theatre
Slight quibbles notwithstanding, this will set the West End’s stock riding high
Enron
Utterly, utterly brilliant. You really are in for a treat
Though 'Trilogy' has won rave reviews, I personally found myself exasperated after about an hour
We went on a quiet sunday evening and the food was excellent, but the experience let down by the service and ambiance
London,
Sarah Frater's rating
Reader rating
Description: Four newly-commissioned works by Wayne McGregor, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Russell Maliphant and Javier De Frutos, inspired by the 100th anniversary of the founding of Les Ballets Russes.
Trains: Tube: Angel 
Phone: 0844412 4300
Website: www.sadlerswells.com
Stealing thunder: Josephine Darvill-Mills, Rebecca Sutherland and Clemmie Sveaas in De Frutos’s Eternal Damnation
Serge Diaghilev’s arrival in Paris 100 years ago forever changed classical dance.
His Ballets Russes revitalised a moribund art form, and his centenary is rightly remember with umpteen celebratory events.
All have genuflected to his monumental legacy, although they’ve skipped his piquant love life and implacable artistic demands.
The choreographers in the Sadler’s Wells Diaghilev pogramme tack into the prevailing wind, except, that is, for Javier Du Frutos.
The Diaghilev centenary has brought out the mischief in him, or, should I say, more mischief than usual, as the Venezuelan choreographer has long cocked a snook at theatrical deference.
Those in the know will laugh out loud at the lengthily titled Eternal Damnation to Sancho and Sanchez.
Those who aren’t may take offence, little wonder as it features an ecclesiastic grotesque raping pregnant women, having warmed himself up on the choir boys.
There’s also eye-gouging, a Brobdingnag mural of a male orgy and an Episcopal throne moonlighting as an electric chair.
Lots of people walked out on opening night, something most definitely in the spirit of Diaghilev, who loved causing kerfuffles. De Frutos knows this, and his running amok surely aims to spoof rather than shock.
His exaggerated means tease our excessive respect, while the music (Ravel’s La Valse) and choreography, when it arrives, reference Diaghilev’s diaspora and devotees — both George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton used the score and De Frutos includes fragments of their styles.
Inevitably he stole the thunder despite bold work from the other three. Russell Maliphant created a solo for the wonderful dancer Daniel Proietto (a name in the making); Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s duet for Daisy Phillips and James O’Hara caught the candid eroticism of Nijinsky’s Faun; and Wayne McGregor tracked the links between art and science in his signature fractured style.
Until 17 October. Information: 0844 412 4300, www.sadlerswells.com.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
