Gentleman Jack Ballet - Northern Arts Review
Northern Ballet at the The Leeds Grand
Gentleman Jack - Northern Arts Review
No one would accuse me of being a snob—at least not to my face. I never perch from high on the mount of good taste and proclaim that theatre shouldn’t iterate on popular subjects or dip into the wellspring of the zeitgeist. I enjoy jukebox musicals and practically bound into my seat at a panto. I have happily followed a property from book to stage to movie to TV and back to stage. However, that doesn’t make me a cheap date. Whenever I see a popular piece of media, or a subject that has been recently covered in other formats, I’m always eager to see how this new medium seizes the opportunity to be a genuinely additive experience for the viewer. Not “can it be done” (almost anything can be done) but what is unlocked by the choice?
Traditionally, ballet gravitates towards myth and legend. And it makes sense. Gods and monsters sit naturally in a world of abstracted movement, their emotions enormous and their conflicts cosmic. But Anne Lister, industrialist, landowner, diarist, and the woman often described as the first modern lesbian, is a figure who offers immediacy and freshness that mythological subjects rarely do. Slipping her story into a new format carries a different kind of risk. So, when I settled into my seat at the Leeds Grand Theatre for Northern Ballet’s world premiere of Gentleman Jack, I was genuinely excited to see whether ballet could offer something new to the once hidden love story that has become an anthem for many people in the Queer community.
Gentleman Jack has been in development for some time, and its pedigree is serious stuff. Choreographed by Annabelle López Ochoa, it was developed alongside dramaturg Clare Croft, choreography consultant and queer dancer-songwriter Jemima Brown, and Sally Wainwright, who wrote the BBC/HBO television series. The production is co-produced with the Finnish National Opera and Ballet and was awarded the FEDORA–Van Cleef & Arpels Dance Prize 2025 before a single public performance. It is also the first major commission under artistic director Federico Bonelli, and perhaps that is why the ambition runs so hot through every element of it. The story follows Anne Lister through her battles with male industrialists, her consuming love affair with Mariana Lawton, and her eventual marriage to Ann Walker—the relationship widely considered the first recorded lesbian wedding in Britain.
To see my full review, please visit Northern Arts Review
See you in the shadows my loves,
Sean x
