The Bright Stream review – Bolshoi's gentle farce brings big guffaws

The story behind the Bright Stream may be a more intriguing drama than the fun but frivolous tale it tells on stage. The original ballet was made in 1935 by the mostly forgotten choreographer Fedor Lopukhov, to one of Shostakovich’s three ballet scores, but the work got on the wrong side of Stalin and was banned. Its librettist was denounced in state newspaper Pravda, sent to the gulag and shot.

Although the original steps are lost, choreographer and former Bolshoi artistic director Alexei Ratmansky came across the score and libretto in the 1990s and decided to create his own version of this Communist comedy set on a collective farm. The result is a rollicking romp that rides on Shostakovich’s dancing rhythms in a score full of melody and gusto. The story is a gentle farce, a jape to trick a husband with a wandering eye involving cross-dressing, identity swaps and a dog riding a bicycle.

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It’s a lightweight yarn but the substance is in the choreography. Ratmansky has a vast palette of different tones at his disposal: fluttery speed, expansive pas de deux, regimented set pieces. His steps are intricate without being fussy, he adds quirks without being self-consciously quirky, it’s agile and playful throughout and is always listening closely to Shostakovich.

The stage looks delicious. Designed by Boris Messerer, it is thick with saturated colour – dense florals in yellow and orange. It’s Cath Kidston with the volume turned right up. This eye-buzzing busyness is followed through in the ensemble choreography: so many bodies on stage, manoeuvred with a touch of musical theatre – Busby Berkeley even – the impact of the group in harmony. That’s your collectivism right there.

Dance is an international language, we’re often reminded, and the lissome eloquence of Daria Khokhlova (as Zina) and Ekaterina Krysanova (The Ballerina), for example, needs no translation. Humour tends to be more culturally specific. The giggles here are variable but the broad stroke caricatures get big guffaws in the stalls, most heartily for Ruslan Skvortsov, a broad-shouldered dancer cross-dressed as a ballerina for a prank. He plays a Romantic sylph with huffy resignation, and he nails the pointe work.