Review - Royal Ballet perform Romeo & Juliet

Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet
Royal Ballet, Barry Wordsworth conductor, Lauren Cuthbertson (Juliet) & Federico Bonelli (Romeo)

22 March 2012, Live cinema broadcast from the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden

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A dilemma for arts companies broadcasting concerts, operas and ballets live to cinemas is how to best package the cinema experience.  Is it trying to create as closely as possible the experience of those actually at the event, or should it recognise the differences and opportunities of cinema and be distinct?  I tried these broadcasts out last December with the Royal Ballet's Sleeping Beauty and was pleasantly surprised.  The frisson of live performance was captured and enhanced by the focused cinema audience.  The advantages of the close ups of dancers, costumes and scenery showed how the modern camera can trump a pair of opera glasses in the hall.  Behind the scenes documentaries enhanced appreciation of the production as a traditional pre-concert talk would.


But this can go too far, as when the atmosphere was disturbed by deafening advertisements for Royal Ballet DVDs at intervals.  Too prosaically cinema for my liking.  And on that occasion by a tub-thumping promotion of the partnership of Lauren Cuthbertson and Sergei Polunin as worthy successors to Nureyev/Fontaine etc.

Prokofiev - also a chess fanatic

Things have not gone according to plan at Royal Ballet marketing.

Polunin left the Royal Ballet abruptly in January.  He was made the youngest principal dancer ever at 19 but said in interviews he wished to leave the punishing rehearsals and tedium of a ballet career.  So, on returning to the cinema for Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet it was Federico Bonelli dancing with Cuthbertson.



Bonelli was strikingly charismatic and engaged very naturally with Cuthbertson, who was most subtle in her acting of Juliet as she develops across the ballet.  Prokofiev's score remains as stunning as ever, culminating in the grindingly powerful final scene at the tomb. 


But one request please.  Can cinema-goers be spared enthusiastic live tweets scrolling across the bottom of the screen at the curtain calls.  They are one sure way to destroy the illusion that you are in decent mid-stalls seats at Covent Garden.