ABT veterans Alessandra Ferri and Herman Cornejo play passionate lovers in Martha Clarke’s unique adaptation of Colette’s CHÉRI (photo by Joan Marcus)
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Extended through December 29, $75
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org
In 1920, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette published the short novel Chéri, the story of a love affair between a young man and an older woman that she had first told in a series of short stories for Le Matin. Baltimore-born director and choreographer Martha Clarke (The Garden of Earthly Delights) has now transformed the beloved tale into a minimalist performance piece that is the first of her three Residency Five productions for the Signature Theatre. Chéri stars current American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Herman Cornejo as the title character, a twenty-four-year-old man in the midst of a torrid six-year affair with Lea (former ABT principal dancer Alessandra Ferri), the forty-nine-year-old best friend of his mother, Charlotte (Amy Irving); both women are courtesans in Belle Époque France. “Was he my gift to her? Or did she take him from me?” Charlotte says to the audience in one of four monologues adapted by Tina Howe (Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances) from Colette’s Chéri and its sequel, The Last of Chéri. Over the course of sixty-five minutes, Cornejo and Ferri perform a series of solos and pas de deux that display their fiery emotions, which grow ever more complicated when Charlotte marries her son off to a virgin from a wealthy family. Chéri and Lea move passionately in rhythm, as if they are the only two people in the world, but when he comes back from fighting in WWI, nothing is quite the same. Although much of the dancing is splendid, particularly when Cornejo lifts Ferri against a wall and his face makes its way down her body, it becomes repetitive, an at-times confounding mix of silent-film acting and operatic panache. Irving is calm and steady as Charlotte, but her words feel unnecessary, as if they could have been trimmed down to spare surtitles instead. Set and costume designer David Zinn’s stage melds the colorful lightness of Bonnard with a Caligari-like German Expressionism, highlighted by long, slanted doorways and mirrors that more than hint at an approaching darkness. The gentle, tender score is played live by pianist Sarah Rothenberg and features selections from Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Richard Wagner, Morton Feldman, and, most prominently, Federico Mompou. Unfortunately, Clarke’s Chéri winds up being less than the sum of its parts, a collaboration that never reaches its potential.