★★★★★ Sir Peter Wright, who was in the audience on Thursday’s opening night, must be very proud of his production, tweaked over the years since its staging in 1985.
Tag - Christina Arestis
★★★★✰ Francesca Hayward is entirely believable as a very young Juliet, overwhelmed by her first experience of falling in love.
★★★★✰ Osipova inhabits the role of Anna Anderson with gruelling sincerity. She appears deranged from the beginning with close-up camera angles revealing a depth of despair that is tremendously affecting.
★★★✰✰ Somehow, still at the start of the run, the production seems sanitised, nicely 'English' in spite of Nicholas Georgiadis's imposing Italian Renaissance sets and costumes. Different casts yet to come might bring fresh discoveries...
Hightlight - Yasmine Naghdi promoted to Principal dancer. Full press release with all Promotions, Joiners and Leavers
★★★★✰ The grand pas de deux was the triumphant highlight of the fairytale festivities. Hay expressed the prince’s pride and pleasure in his variations; Takada was demure and regal in hers...
★★★★★ The Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker has undergone various changes since its gala premiere in 1984, not least in the central roles of Clara and Drosselmeyer...
★★★✰✰ The last act redeems the evening. We learn more about the characters in the final 40 minutes than in the two preceding acts.
★★★✰✰ Liam Scarlett treats Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic horror novel, Frankenstein, as essentially a domestic drama.
★★★★✰ Lamb's mad scene is all the more effective by starting as though she’s a broken porcelain doll, uncomprehending. She retreats into her herself in disbelief at Albrecht’s treachery.
Royal Ballet Don Quixote London, Royal Opera House 25 November 2014 Gallery of pictures by Dave Morgan www.roh.org.uk New directors of old ballets are often tempted to make them relevant to today by stripping away dated conventions and substituting new ones: earthy peasants, drunken party-goers, crazed hallucinations in place of visions. Carlos Acosta has not gone too far in his 2013 version of...
The programme was so underwhelming that I went twice in succession, to see whether alternative casts could make a difference.
In the Royal Ballet's last programme for this season two old favourites frame the first performances of Alastair Marriott's latest work, Connectome. It's a well-balanced evening and gives the new piece every chance to shine.
The Royal Ballet are pushing their cinema relay performances as a way of getting 'out there'- so what's it like to see Osipova and Acosta out in the sticks? Margaret Willis gives her view and talks to others on the experience...
It looks as though Natalia Osipova is to become Sylvie Guillem’s successor at the Royal Ballet, giving her idiosyncratic interpretation of a role whether or not it aligns with the company’s existing production.
Most of the dancers on stage tonight were not even born when the Royal Ballet' s current Nutcracker production was new, and many of the audience too may imagine that it's been a feature of the Christmas season forever...
It is a fine selection which illustrates the variety of the Royal’s heritage works, which must beg the question how well are they are danced now...