Eonnagata, Sadlers Wells

When I discovered that this is a collaboration between dancer Sylvie Guillem, choreographer Russell Maliphant and my favourite theatre director Robert Lepage I absolutely had to get tickets.

A cross between dance & theatre it tells the true story of the Chevalier d'Eon, an 18th century French diplomat & spy and master swordsman. He was also a transvestite. Casanova described him as 'une belle femme' and Marie Antoinette lent him her dressmaker. Sent to London to carry out his spying tasks he mixed amongst the great and the good of the English Court. When the spying dried up he eventually fell into financial hardship and resorted to staging exhibition fencing matches against men (he was still dressed as a woman) to earn a living. On his eventual return to France Louis XV only agreed to pay him his pension on the condition that he dressed in woman's clothing for the rest of his life. His true gender was only revealed during his autopsy.

So I was really looking forward to it. But it wasn't actually very good. In fact it was *whisper* a bit boring. It started off very promisingly with Guillam the first to appear on stage, in a beautiful scarlet dress, to deliver the opening lines. Next entered Lepage, resplendent in a dreadful orange wig (he wears the worst wigs but let's not get personal) who performed some pretty impressive moves to convey the mastery of the Chevalier's sword skills. Then Maliphant came on stage and fluffed his lines. To be fair he is a dancer and so isn't used to delivering dialogue. We then knew that this show was going to be a bit half baked.

It was described as halfway between dance and theatre but because of this neither element really worked properly, with all three of the performers venturing into territory which they were not used to performing in. Also, the story didn't gel with either the dance or theatre elements and I was left thinking at the end, 'What was the point of putting this on stage?'

What a shame. Here are three internationally respected, world class performers who collaborate on what sounds like a very exciting project and somehow it just fails to come alive. However, the lighting was something special and some of Alexander McQueen's costumes were stunning.

You can judge for yourself here with a short clip from the show.