John Cranko resident choreographer for Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet's 1950–51 season. For the company's Festival of Britain season in 1951 Cranko choreographed the comic ballet "Pineapple Poll", to the music of Arthur Sullivan (newly out of copyright) arranged by the conductor Charles Mackerras. Another collaboration with Mackerras followed in 1954 with "The Lady and the Fool", to music by Verdi. In January 1954 Sadler's Wells Ballet announced that Cranko was collaborating with Benjamin Britten to create a ballet. Cranko devised a draft scenario for a work he originally called "The Green Serpent", fusing elements drawn from "King Lear", "Beauty and the Beast"
Pineapple Poll 1972 and Oslo Ballet in 1975. In recent years, the ballet has fallen out of the professional ballet repertory in the US, although there was a revival in 2004 by Spectrum Dance Theater of Seattle, with new choreography by Donald Byrd, and it is it is sometimes played as an orchestral piece. The ballet is occasionally produced by amateur groups. In the UK, it remains in the repertoire of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, with a run of performances in 2006 and 2007 and a tour, including to Sadler's Wells Theatre, in 2011. The score, or excerpts from it, has been