Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Jimmy’s clever friend Crake decides to wipe out humanity and replace it with the Crakers, a new, improved species of pretty, passive plant-eaters. The handful of humans who survive the pandemic struggle to build a new life in the ruins. Welcome to the Royal Ballet’s MaddAddam, a 2022 co-production with the National Ballet of Canada which had its UK premiere at London’s Covent Garden on Thursday. Striking designs and superb dancing were let down by a fuzzy, overthought scenario.Wayne McGregor’s three-act works have obliged the conscientious balletgoer to read (or re-read) three Virginia Woolfs; The Divine Comedy; and now Margaret Atwood’s post-apocalyptic trilogy, Oryx and Crake (2003), After the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). Let’s hope his book club never stumbles on Proust.Atwood’s rambling 300,000-word parable is filled with great loops of flashback and frequent changes of viewpoint. Rather than untangle the threads connecting the characters to the catastrophe, McGregor and his dramaturge Uzma Hameed ponder the novels’ themes: anthropogenic climate change; the perils of gene-editing; and the human need to tell stories and devise rituals. The action is divided into three non-chronological sections: “Castaway”, “Extinctathon” and “Dawn”. The latter supplies a sequel to the novels, imagining a kind of stretchwear Elysium for the hybrid descendants of the Crakers and survivors. Despite scorning a literal treatment, McGregor includes a confusing amount of text. An expository voiceover feeds us the story so far and nagging captions forever tell us who’s who or what year it is but things never really become clear.It all looks spectacular. The stage is dominated by a vast egg devised by architects We Not I, which serves as a screen for Ravi Deepres’s harrowing projections: cities in flames; violent protest; a pack of wolves devouring a deer. Atwood’s junkyard dystopia is held together with duct tape by people dressed in old bedsheets but Gareth Pugh clothes God’s Gardeners in gleaming white Lycra. He has more fun with the named characters: Ren gets a second skin of gold sequins, while Gary Avis’s bad guy Blanco draws the short straw with a pink fun-fur bolero. Max Richter’s cinematic score blends recorded electronic sound and live orchestra, conducted by Koen Kessels. Thursday’s cast was led by Joseph Sissens and William Bracewell, who powered through their roles as Jimmy and Crake. There is a muscular duet for the two men and an intriguing pass-the-parcel pas de trois with Oryx, the woman they both love (Fumi Kaneko, on form and en pointe). Melissa Hamilton brings stern grace to Toby, the herbalist and beekeeper at the heart of the story. She is partnered by Lukas B Brændsrød, whose long limbs unfurl with the scary speed of a sail caught by the wind.The all-male ensemble in act two is a reminder of the company’s strength in depth but individual talents still catch the eye. Liam Boswell swizzles in from the wings, a human tornado. Marco Masciari gives McGregor’s familiar moves an urgent, even dangerous edge. Like Boswell, he has the eerie ability to suddenly break a classical line as if a couple of lumbar vertebrae had simply melted away.★★★☆☆To November 30, rbo.org.uk
