Faster than it takes to escape from a Turkish prison, ballet’s bad boy Sergei Polunin has disappeared from Peter Schaufuss’ production of Midnight Express. The show is due to open on Tuesday in London but according the the London Evening Standard he has not shown up for rehearsals, is not answering his phone, and is not in his hotel. The official statement simply says he has withdrawn due to “unforeseen circumstances”.
His last disappearing act — from the Royal Ballet in January of 2012 — astonished the ballet world, but it was thought that becoming part of the Stanislavsky company under the watchful eye of his mentor Igor Zelensky had given him the stability and freedom he was searching for. A disappointed Schaufuss said,
I really hope that it’s not a repeat of last year when he walked out. He seemed to have matured a lot and become more confident. Until now, we had no reason to believe otherwise.
Zelensky is also in the cast, and the role, based on Billy Hayes’s autobiographical story of a young man jailed in Turkey for drug-smuggling, seems tailor made for Polunin, all of which makes his withdrawal even more surprising.
Just a month ago in an interview with The Times, Polunin stated,
I did try cocaine, but it was more of an experiment than an addiction.
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