A dream evening: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Dream Ballets

Regents Park Open Air Theatre, London
June 20, 2025

The Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre has a rich history of presenting the musicals of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. So, when artistic director and choreographer Drew McOnie decided to programme an evening of dance, what could be more appropriate than presenting re-imaginings of the dream ballets from the duo’s Carousel, Allegro and Oklahoma! (all originally choreographed by the great Agnes de Mille).

There was a moment when McOnie thought about choreographing the show himself but instead he commissioned three other leading dance-makers: ZooNation artistic director Kate Prince; Julia Cheng, who also has a hip hop background but who is best known for her dance for Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof; and movement director Shelley Maxwell, who choreographed England on Fire for the BalletBoyz and Disney’s superhero film The Marvels. The result was a fine evening, full of variety, colour and wonderful dance; a couple of hours to put a smile on anyone’s face.

The sun may have dipped behind the trees that form the backdrop to the stage, but it was still lovely and warm as the 26-piece Sinfonia Simith Square struck up the opening overture that gave a taste of things to come.

But what is a dream ballet? Essentially, they’re dance interludes, usually hybrid in style. They come in all sorts of forms, sometimes separate from the core plot, sometimes part of it. ‘Dream’ doesn’t so much indicate an experience had in sleep as a space beyond reality. Happenings of dream ballets are commonly a figment of main character or characters’ imagination. They are a window into those characters’ minds. The first as we really know them today was that in Oklahoma! but tthey were present long before that musical’s premiere in 1943, albeit in slightly different form. And while most common in the 1940s and 1950s, especially in the Hollywood musicals of MGM, they remain part of musical theatre even today.

With each choreographer working with Simon Hale’s fabulous extended musical arrangements of the ballets, first up was Prince’s colourful, inventive, hip-hop reworking of Carousel. Like her fellow choreographers, she has not felt confined by the stories or themes of the original, but has rather taken the music as inspiration to do something new.

Prince presents a group of five dancers in colourful outfits put together from numerous items of sportswear by costume designer Yann Seabra. Tethered to an imaginary carousel by bungee cords that Prince explains represent things in their past that hold them back, it’s just as easy to see them as bewildered, frightened horses. The temporary nature of the bungees’ anchoring does restrict significantly how much can be done with them but it’s an unusual choreographic device. However you view the figures, they undoubtedly want to break free.

At the centre of the work, controlling the others, is the wonderful Tommy Franzen, in contrasting black, and who recently picked up Best Male Dancer at the 2024 National Dance Awards. How does he backflip so gracefully? The hip-hop comes together with Hammerstein’s music as if they were meant for each other. There are plenty of chances for all the dancers get their moment in the spotlight, with a trio for Franzen, Malachi Welch and Elijah Smith the stand-out. Carousel was a terrific start.

A musical that remains little known to many, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s innovative experiment Allegro chronicles nearly four decades in the life of a man, Joseph Taylor, Jr., from cradle through a midlife, personal revelation.

Julia Cheng’s version of its dream ballet features a group of dancers around a park bench. Strong on visual humour, it features slapstick and makes use of a lot of props taken from a shopping trolley pushed around by a genial old man. It’s light and bounces along. But then you realise there’s a hnit of a darker underbelly, the old man wants to be in charge and direct the others, which would prove to be a theme across all three ballets. The comic timing was excellent, the dance mostly joyous, but it somehow lacked the clarity of theme of the other two.

Rounding the evening off, Shelley Maxwell’s take on the ballet from Oklahoma! was by far the darkest of the three. It opens with a bit of fun, Christopher Akrill marching on ahead of real conductor Alex Parker and trying to take control of the orchestra. Made up as something between ringmaster and clown, wearing a Stetson, and ‘shouting’ America, Akrill’s already decidedly unsettling. Creepy, even.

He goes on to direct a mean but quite balletic game of musical chairs with the other dancers, enjoying the elimination of each. But then those other characters morph into clowns themselves, before getting their own back. Read it as you will, but it’s impossible not to see it as a satirical comment of present-day politics, and American politics in particular.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Dream Ballets ran for just four days at Regent’s Park. It was something new for the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and ran for only four evenings. But the show was a breath of theatrical fresh air. Surely Drew McOnie will have seen enough to be convinced that his experiment is worth continuing with. It would also be fabulous to think that the triple bill might have a life at other venues too.

As the song from Oklahoma! goes, “Then out of my dreams I’ll go, Into a dream with you.” Great stuff. And yes, I was still humming the music next morning!