Last Monday's Romeo and Juliet - a Cinematic as well as a Balletic Triumph

Author Russ London Licence CC BY-SA 3.0 Source Wikimedia Commons

Royal Ballet Romeo and Juliet Cinema 14 Feb 2022 19:30

Last Monday's screening of the Royal Ballet's Romeo and Juliet was quite different from previous ones and all the better for it.  Gone were the gushing tweets from cinema audiences around the world and the presenters' platitudes.  In its place were interviews with Edward Watson and Leanne Benjamin with Dame Darcey passing on her wisdom and experience to Anna Rose O’Sullivan. Exactly how I want to see one of the greatest ballerinas of my lifetime.

Not only that but there was very clever camera work that caught O'Sullivan's ecstasy in the balcony scene or James Hay's pain after his stabbing by Tybalt. I noticed details in the screening that I had missed before. Consequently, I learned a lot about the ballet on Monday even though I had been watching MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet on screen as well as on stage since the 1960s. 

Although I must have seen them many times I had never really noted Anna Rose O'Sullivan or Marcelino Sambé until now,  but I am a fan of both of them now.  There is something about O'Sullivan that reminded me of Antoinette Sibley.  Sambé is very different from Dowell but I think we may have seen on Monday the start of a partnership between him and O'Sullivan which will be remembered like that of Sibley and Dowell.

There were two other dancers who particularly caught my eye who happen to be my all-time favourite Drosselmeyers.  One was Thomas Whitehead who danced Tybalt with menace earning what appeared to be isolated pantomime villain boos at the reverence as well as cinema vibrating roars. The other was Gary Avis who danced Juliet's well-meaning dad, puzzled and exasperated by his teenage daughter's apparent inability to grasp in Paris a dishy, decent husband and a comfortable future. 

All in the cast danced brilliantly, James Hay as Mercutio, Nicol Edmonds as Paris, Kristen McNally as Lady Capulet, Philip Mosley as Friar Lawrence, Romany Pajdak as the nurse.    There were also Prince Escalus, harlots, mandolin dancers, knights and their ladies and the street folk of renaissance Verona.  All deserve commendation but if I mentioned more names this would look less like a review and more like a telephone directory.

Nevertheless, my review must acknowledge three of the creatives: Laura Morera who staged the show, the conductor Jonathan Lo who first came to my notice at Northern Ballet, and the late Nicholas Georgiadis whose designs remind me of the work of Leon Bakst.  If there was a weakness in the screening it was that the richness of Georgiadis's sets did not always come through. That always seems to be a problem with ballet on film.

Last Monday happened to be my birthday.  It was a delightful day with calls and cards and presents.  But the screening was definitely a high point.  So many thanks for that, Royal Ballet.  

Readers who missed the performance have a second chance on Sunday.