'Like Water for Chocolate' review — this is ballet at its most exhilarating, visually sumptuous and utterly irresistible

Read our review of Christopher Wheeldon's Like Water for Chocolate, now in performances at the Royal Opera House to 24 October.

Summary

• Christopher Wheeldon’s 2022 ballet adaptation of Laura Esquivel’s bestselling novel makes a glorious return to the Royal Opera House
• The story features family conflict and desperate desire as two lovers are kept apart
• Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé are extraordinary as the yearning soulmates
• The Mexican-influenced direction and design is incredibly detailed and imaginative

Well, isn’t this just heavenly. The revival of Christopher Wheeldon’s 2022 adaptation of Laura Esquivel’s bestselling novel Like Water for Chocolate should be welcomed back to the Royal Opera House with rapturous applause. Blending Wheeldon’s signature lyricism with a heady infusion of magical realism, the ballet is a feast for the senses – and the will-they-won’t-they love story will leave you with your heart caught in your throat.

With every step perfectly married to the glorious Mexican-inspired score by Joby Talbot, which uses traditional sounds and instruments to paint its pictures, the story has a kaleidoscopic richness. Tradition dictates that a youngest daughter must care for her mother until her death. But in Mama Elena’s (Fumi Kaneko) house, her youngest daughter Tita (the wonderful Francesca Hayward) falls madly in love with their neighbour Pedro (Marcelino Sambé). After several spats between Tita and her mother, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detail, Pedro weds Tita’s older sister, Rosaura – not for her, but as an attempt to remain close to the woman he truly loves.

Over decades, the narrative spills out into family drama, illness, heartbreak, and desperate, heated longing. Every scene Tita and Pedro share is fuelled by impossible desire. They dance together like magnets, tugged forcefully closer with every glance. Their final, elated pas de deux is a union of passion and artistry. Hayward and Sambé seem as if they were built to dance as one.

All eyes are on the central couple. But the supporting cast shapes the world of Esquivel’s book. Matthew Ball’s Dr John Brown dances with a lightness that mirrors his character’s natural goodness, while Kaneko’s Mama Elena is spiky in her movements: a towering, iron-fisted presence on stage.

With a set designed by Bob Crowley, every new sequence is flushed with imagination and light and shade. Wheeldon’s details are exquisite: ribbons symbolise a marriage union, while a vision of Mama Elena rises from the grave, as if she’s been shot with an even higher dose of evil, and a line of women are split down the middle with costumes that have a white dress on one side and a black one on the back. Nothing is made without intention.

Mexican influences are layered into the direction, too, with the fiesta marriage scenes in particular feeling alive with traditional rhythms and festivity. If you’re not familiar with the story, a read of the synopsis is advised before taking your seat. But with dance that is so genuinely absorbing, newcomers will be easily pulled into Wheeldon’s creation. This is ballet at its most exhilarating: visually sumptuous, emotionally charged, and utterly irresistible.

Like Water for Chocolate is at the Royal Opera House to 24 October. Book Like Water for Chocolate tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Like Water for Chocolate (Photos by Foteini Christofilopoulou)