The star turns of Alastair Marriott’s new work The Unknown Soldier are Es Devlin’s set and Bruno Poet’s lighting design, and if this had been an installation at Tate Modern, I would have been thrilled by the iridescent colours and the use of shadow. As a multi-media ballet at the Royal Opera House, it is less effective: at times the partially lowered curtain bathed in shimmering streams of rainbow light, or the large screen that descended from above, obscured the back of the stage; even from row C of the Amphitheatre sightlines seemed perilous. Marriott aspires to tell his story from a primarily female perspective, drawing on the recorded words of Florence Billington, who is shown in archive footage projected on the front curtain, and danced by Yasmine Naghdi. The other two named roles are for men; Matthew Ball as Ted Feltham (the soldier), and Leo Dixon as the Telegraph Boy, dressed in a kinky shiny uniform with see-through effect. (more…)
November 26, 2018
The Royal Ballet in The Unknown Soldier, Infra, and Symphony in C, Royal Opera House, 23 November 2018 – Maggie Watson reviews
Posted by susiecrow under reviews | Tags: Akane Takada, Alastair Marriott, Alexander Campbell, Bruno Poet, Es Devlin, George Balanchine, Infra, Lauren Cuthbertson, Leo Dixon, Maggie Watson, Marianela Nuñez, Matthew Ball, Royal Opera House, Ryoichi Hirano, Symphony in C, The Royal Ballet, The Unknown Soldier, Vadim Muntagirov, Valentino Zucchetti, Wayne McGregor, Yasmine Naghdi |Leave a Comment