Pineapple Poll

Gerald Dowler hosts a special episode about the comic ballet Pineapple Poll created for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and its creators John Cranko and Charles Mackerras.

Pineapple Poll, was the first major success on the London stage for both its choreographer, John Cranko and its arranger and music director Charles Mackerras. Mackerras suggested to Cranko the story from W.S. Gilberts Bab Ballad, The Bumboat Woman’s Story. The ballet is set for five lead characters. The story unfolds with the heroine, Pineapple Poll, setting her sights on the handsome Captain Belaye of HMS Pinafore. Poll’s own admirer, Jasper, is rejected until the very end of the ballet, when all disputes are resolved. Belaye marries his intended, the blue blooded Blanche, though her chaperone, the dotty Mrs Dimple remains ever present. Six corps de ballet couples swell the cast and represent the largest ensemble used by Cranko to date. Sets and costumes were by Obsert Lancaster.

It enjoyed huge success throughout the 1960s and 70s, but is now rarely performed. It still exists in name, at least in the repertoire of the Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Joining Gerald Dowler around the table are the conductor, Barry Wordsworth, who has long been associated with the Royal Opera House Orchestra, the Royal Ballet Sinfonia as well as many orchestras worldwide; Nigel Simeoni, a writer and musicologist; Reid Anderson who trained at the Royal Ballet School before joining Stuttgart Ballet in 1969, where he became a principal dancer and then later Ballet Master, and returned, after a stint directing the National Ballet of Canada, in 1996 as Company Director, where he remained for over 20 years; and Brenda Last who joined the Royal Ballet in 1963 from Western Theatre Ballet. She became a principal in 1965 and danced an enormous range of roles including the role of Poll in Pineapple Poll.

This episode was recorded in 2019.