British choreographer Cathy Marston has made literary adaptations a cornerstone of her work. My Brilliant Career, the closing work in Queensland Ballet’s latest triple bill, Trilogy, joins the illustrious company of Jane Eyre, Dangerous Liaisons, Of Mice and Men and Lady Chatterley’s Lover among others. 

Miles Franklin’s novel, published in 1901, has at its centre a loveable but maddening creature with outsized desires. Sybylla Melvyn is a clever, funny, rebellious, complicated young woman who has aspirations to greatness and lives in a world too small for her ambitions. 

Somewhat ironically and unfortunately, Sybylla in Marston’s dance version is also put into a straitjacket. This Brilliant Career feels at odds with its source, contained and often opaque where Franklin’s Sybylla is passionate and unflinchingly direct. 

Marston splits Sybylla in two to represent her undeniable contradictions but despite the lovely rapport between Mia Heathcote (Syb, who wants to be loved) and Laura Toser (unconventional Bylla), neither is terribly interesting. Sybylla’s scratchy vigour isn’t strengthened by being doubled; it’s diluted.

The two-faces-of-Sybylla approach may well have worked had My Brilliant Career not fallen between two stools. It’s neither pure abstraction that gets deeply inside Sybylla’s psyche nor fully fleshed narrative that tells a detailed story. 

As is so often the case when it comes to new works, the program note has to do some heavy lifting. If patrons failed to bone up beforehand they would have been quite puzzled as to who was whom in the ballet. George Balanchine’s oft-quoted dictum that “there are no mothers-in-law in ballet” comes to mind. He meant that ballet is not an ideal form through which to express certain relationships – those at one remove, such as a mother-in-law or, in My Brilliant Career, “unmarried Aunt Helen”. In their note Marston and her long-time dramaturg Edward Kemp lay out their narrative with a clarity that doesn’t always translate to the stage. 

And if viewers came to the ballet with close acquaintance of the novel or – and this is more likely, Gillian Armstrong’s 1979 film starring Judy Davis – they would feel something is missing. The ballet, of course, cannot and should not be expected to be a facsimile of the novel; it is an adaptation steering its own course. The course chosen here, however, feels limited. 

There’s a decent sense of place via David Fleischer’s design and Matthew Hindson’s score. There are lively group dances and a strong role for Sybylla’s would-be lover Harry (elegant Victor Estévez on opening night) but the unusual 45-minute length is telling. The piece is either too long and too short. It ends up being about a girl in two minds who knocks back a boy who loves her. What brilliant career she aspires to remains unknown.

Trilogy opens with the super-moody, elusive A Brief Nostalgia by the ever-watchable young Brisbane choreographer Jack Lister. It was made in 2019 for Birmingham Royal Ballet and now is on home ground. Not yet 30, Lister already has an impressive CV. Formerly a dancer with QB he is now the company’s associate choreographer. Last year he added the role of creative associate at Australasian Dance Collective where he also dances. 

A Brief Nostalgia was inspired by the Portuguese word saudade, not easily translatable. It has to do with memory, longing and a sense of loss. Just as the word is hard to pin down, so is Lister’s dance. Everything is seen in shades of grey, huge shadows dwarf the dancers and forbidding walls summon a sense of confinement or even doom in designs by Thomas Mika (sets and costumes) and Alexander Berlage (lights). It’s a striking, enigmatic look powered by Scottish composer Tom Harrold’s terrific, film-noirish score.

Lister seems to have an innate sense of shape and structure. He knows precisely when to introduce something surprising and new and nothing outstays its welcome.  

A Brief Nostalgia doesn’t invite a great deal of emotional engagement until the end, when a sensual duo (Georgia Swan and D’Arcy Brazier on opening night) raises the temperature. Instead of watching the memories of others from a distant vantage point one is finally drawn into something intensely intimate. It’s a piece I’d be happy to see again.

The muscular introspection of A Brief Nostalgia is followed by Christopher Bruce’s Rooster, a jeux d’esprit from 1991 to Rolling Stones songs. One could go into a deep discussion about show-offy men and knowing, amused women but really all you want from Rooster is to sit back and enjoy sexy dancing to fantastic music. The song list includes Paint It Black, Ruby Tuesday, As Tears Go By and Not Fade Away as well as Little Red Rooster. If one is being picky the QB men could have found an extra smidgeon of arrogance to sharpen their moves. The women were spot-on, especially Laura Toser. She was elevated relatively recently to the position of soloist and gives every indication of not stopping there. Toser looked to be having the hugest amount of fun with Victor Estévez in Play With Fire and thus so did we. 

Trilogy ends June 25.