Ruination by Lost Dog – Linbury Theatre, Covent Garden

In the basement Linbury Theatre we have chosen, as Hades himself points out, to visit the underworld rather than The Nutcracker, taking place upstairs on the main Royal Opera House stage. What kind of people, he enquiries, watch a show called Ruination rather than a Christmas classic? Fortunately, there is no doubt about the best place to be – Ruination is a multi-layered, multi-talented triumph, a challenging, funny and spectacular piece of dance-music-theatre that defies classification in the best way. Lost Dog specialise in story-telling that turns our assumptions on their head in a number of ways. They take stories we think we know – as in Juliet and Romeo and A Tale of Two Cities, and show them to be something else entirely. And they use dance as the basis for story-telling, combining movement with narrative theatre and much else beside in a way that remains exceptional and unchallenged on the British stage.

Ruination is the story of Medea, set up as a trial in the underworld. Medea, her ex-husband Jason, their two sons, and Jason’s second wife Glauce are all dead, and in the realm of Hades, played by Jean-Daniel Broussé as flamboyant impresario, with his wife Persephone (Anna-Kay Gayle). The show finds time to question the myth of Persephone’s imprisonment in the underworld which, as she herself points out, involved her kidnapping (she claims she was snatched by Hades in a white van). However, their main role is to host the newly arrived dead, who find themselves in a bureaucracy where forms need to be filled, Lethe drunk from a water cooler, and the journey to heaven or hell embarked upon. Jason, Greek hero who seems to have died in a drunken accident, asks for Medea to be place on trial for the murder of her children and of Glauce, opening up a dissection of the Medea story. Was she, could she, have committed the worst crime of all – and what part did Jason’s behaviour play in what happened? Who does the version that we know really belong to?

Ruination makes us think hard about why we believe what we are told by the mythmakers who control the cultural narrative. If that sounds worthy, it is anything but. Director Ben Duke, co-founder of Lost Dog, treats us to an astonishingly rich staging, his resources augmented by collaboration with the Royal Ballet. The dance is remarkable, each piece a stand out, from Jason (a charismatic Liam Francis) awaking from the dead and learning, spasmodically, to walk again; to the skeleton dance from Ray Harryhausen’s animation; to Medea (a disarmingly open Hannah Shepherd) rubbing ointment over (almost) all of Jason’s naked body; to Aeetes (Miguel Altunaga) Medea’s deeply sinister father, dancing with his daughter; to a final scene in which Medea is born aloft, like a crucifixion, as she struggles in vain to swim the waters of the Charon to reach her dead sons, in limbo.

Duke seamlessly blends movement with story-telling, but he also uses music to create atmosphere in ways that are truly memorable. Steve Reich’s Clapping Music accompanies Jason’s fateful transgression with Glauce (Maya Carroll). Yshani Perinpanayagam sings Radiohead’s Pyramid Song in his eerie counter-tenor, like something from a Peter Greenway film. Louis Armstrong’s version of Mack the Knife plays alongside a staccato conga of the dead. And the show ends with the heart-stopping voice of Sheree Dubois, singing George’ Harrison’s song Isn’t It a Pity. Every scene is a showstopper.

Ruination is inventive and sophisticated, and it is funny and moving. It is probably Lost Dog’s best show yet, but their resumé is increasingly full of work that carves a new path for performance. Ben Duke treats his audiences with respect, delivering shows that respond to the hyper-aware 21st century by avoiding easy routes. Instead, he plays gleefully with our expectations, and gives us stories that reflect our times and can make us laugh and gasp in the same breath.