Beloved tale brought to life
The magic of a classic tale has worked wonders for balletLORENT whose founder, Liv Lorent, tells David Whetstone about The Velveteen Rabbit
Hopping into Gosforth Civic Theatre in time for Christmas is a tale called The Velveteen Rabbit which was a hit for its author more than 100 years ago and is now working its magic in the medium of dance.
It has all the hallmarks of a classic, a charming tale with a simple yet profound message for all ages in any era.
Had Liv Lorent read it or had it read to her as a child, it surely would have entered the balletLORENT repertoire years ago.
But the choreographer, based in Newcastle with her dance company since 1996, encountered the story for the first time only a few years ago, coming at it obliquely.
She thinks she spotted a key passage on a poster – a conversation between two toys in the nursery, the Velveteen Rabbit and the wise but battered old Skin Horse – and then set out to find the book.
“That philosophical conversation I found enchanting and very balletLORENT, in that as a company we celebrate individuality and age and beauty and wrinkles and wisdom.
“Then there’s the perennial story of not fitting in. The rabbit is not a mechanical toy so feels different to other toys in the nursery. He’s trying to find acceptance and belonging.
“Well, that’s very much balletLORENT’s world. My whole life’s work has been about wanting to celebrate difference in whatever way it appears.
“I’m interested in neurodivergence but what we know now as ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome or autism weren’t understood back then. A lot of shame was attached to such things and people were hidden away.”
Liv’s Newcastle debut 28 years ago was a dance piece called PassAge to Passion and it broke new ground by featuring three professional dancers and 80 community participants aged eight to 82.
Margery Williams, you can’t help feeling, would have been interested in that.
Born in London, although she lived for much of her life in America, she became a professional writer at the age of 19.
She wrote many books but proper recognition came with her first children’s story, published in 1922 when she was 41. Its full title is The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real.
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A boy, referred to simply as Boy, finds a velveteen rabbit in his Christmas stocking and loves it briefly until flashier and more expensive mechanical toys come along.
“The mechanical toys were very superior and looked down upon everyone else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were Real,” so the story goes.
One day the rabbit asks the old skin horse, who was wise, “for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away”, what is meant by Real.
And the horse tells him Real isn’t how you’re made but a thing that happens to you when a child loves you for a long, long time.
He says that, yes, being loved can hurt a bit, but it doesn’t matter if most of your hair has been “loved off” and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and shabby, “because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand”.
Liv, made MBE for services to dance in 2014, knew she had to do something with the story.
Speaking from balletLORENT HQ at the John Marley Centre in Newcastle’s west end, she says: “The first thing we did was a little film during the pandemic when we couldn’t do shows.
“It was something we could give free to audiences but then we built it into the live show that’s been super successful.”
It premiered at the John Marley Centre in December 2023 when the few shows were seen by more than 1,000 people.
“It was the first show we’d done in a while for very young children and their families. Mostly our shows have been for adults or ages five-plus or eight-plus, but this was designed for pre-schoolers.
“What a gorgeous audience that age group is!
“But really, the audiences have been cross-generational because it’s such a well-loved story and, of course, those really young audience members don’t come alone.
“Our aim is always to try to make things as interesting for the adults as for the kids because they also deserve the best we can deliver.
“Adults might take their kids to see Bluey or Peppa Pig or In The Night Garden but we hope our show speaks more widely to everyone.
“The Velveteen Rabbit is such a universal story because of that discussion about what it is to be real and the idea that you can still be loved when you are shabby and old.”
Those original performances were followed by a spring tour which took the show to Alnwick, Berwick, Darlington and Sadler’s Wells in London.
Revived, says Liv, “due to popular demand”, it is being performed at Gosforth Civic Theatre for Christmas and then in Bishop Auckland, Manchester and Edinburgh.
Liv says a few necessary tweaks have been made to Margery Williams’ text to bring it up to date, and this time there has also been a necessary rejig of the cast.
Natalie MacGillivray, now advanced in pregnancy, has handed over the role of Velveteen Rabbit to Gavin Coward, who previously played Boy, although Liv explains that her version of the story is presented as a grown man looking back.
John Kendall now dances the part of Boy and three other dancers - Toby Fitzgibbons, Tassia Sissins and Virginia Scudeletti – play many roles including a soldier, a ragdoll, a fairy, Skin Horse, a robot and a wild rabbit.
The sets and costumes are by Nasir Mazhar, the narration is by Ben Crompton, who happens to be Liv’s husband, and the music by Murray Gold and Albie Crompton, Liv’s son.
It is a bit of a family affair, agrees Liv.
But balletLORENT has its own extended family, including the squad of knitters who were recruited for a production of Rumpelstiltskin and then stuck around, adding a distinctive touch to many a show – including this one.
“It’s very cosy with all the cushions our knitters have made,” says Liv.
“My mission with this was to make it work for babies and toddlers and neurodivergent audience or kids who’ve maybe never been to the theatre.
“It’s a show with dynamism but also gentleness with everything, from the colours and textures to the way it’s performed, designed to deliver a warm escapist experience.”
Catch The Velveteen Rabbit at Gosforth Civic Theatre on December 20, 21 or 22, or at Bishop Auckland Town Hall on January 25. You can buy tickets online via www.balletlorent.com.