Romeo & Juliet Beyond Words

[alison]

3 hours ago, capybara said:

But it was (more than) a worthwhile venture. The viewing figures will be interesting!

 

Does anyone know how much publicity the BBC gave it?  I don't remember seeing any trailers, but then I haven't been watching that much TV since Christmas.  I would hate it if its potential audience had missed it due to lack of promotion.

[Beryl H]

This was my sort of Romeo and Juliet, shorter and with no breaks, it captured the vital moments of the ballet without the tedium I usually suffer at the theatre, and with a gorgeous cast and good picture quality!  Francesca Hayward looked perfect as Juliet, and what a fierce Tybalt from Matthew Ball, the double death and Lady Capulet scene, not usually my favourite, became very tragic indeed. The ending didn't seem to show the moment Juliet lies backwards over the tomb, unless I was mistaken, luckily I recorded it so can see it all again.

[Odyssey]

4 hours ago, alison said:

 

Does anyone know how much publicity the BBC gave it?  I don't remember seeing any trailers, but then I haven't been watching that much TV since Christmas.  I would hate it if its potential audience had missed it due to lack of promotion.

I wasn’t aware of any trailers but the Christmas Radio Times ran a two page feature about Francesca with some attractive photos.

[Sim]

4 hours ago, Beryl H said:

This was my sort of Romeo and Juliet, shorter and with no breaks, it captured the vital moments of the ballet without the tedium I usually suffer at the theatre, and with a gorgeous cast and good picture quality!  Francesca Hayward looked perfect as Juliet, and what a fierce Tybalt from Matthew Ball, the double death and Lady Capulet scene, not usually my favourite, became very tragic indeed. The ending didn't seem to show the moment Juliet lies backwards over the tomb, unless I was mistaken, luckily I recorded it so can see it all again.

No, she doesn’t lie over the tomb like onstage.  You just see her hands and hair hanging down.  Quite effective, although I prefer the original version!

[Peanut68]

I missed the dramatic backbend over edge of tomb too.... & was heartbroken their hands never quite touched.... but guess that was the reaction director wanted! 🙁

[Jan McNulty]

I've always thought the very end of MacMillan's R&J somewhat silly.  Why would Juliet climb back on her tomb rather than embrace her love on the floor.  I found the ending of the film where you just see her hands reaching out to but not quite touching his particularly poignant.

[Anna C]

I’ve just remembered a change I did particularly like, which was that Nurse actually got Juliet dressed just as the Capulets and Paris marched into Juliet’s bedroom after Romeo had left.  I know Juliet’s nightie is very lovely but I always think it odd that onstage she has to receive her Father and Paris AND runs all the way to the Friar wearing nothing but a flimsy nightdress.  It made more sense that Nurse would have hurried her into a dress before Lord Capulet comes in.

[Peanut68]

I did Q the climbing on tomb bit but guessed she wants to spare any Q being asked or any assumptions that perhaps Romeo had defiled her ‘dead’ body? 

She wants to avoid Q of others too such as nurse/friar etc. Who may bet in trouble.... this the true tragedy of this young love play! She takes on board all the consequences of her actions....

my thoughts anyhow...

she messed up but tries like the good girl she inherently is to put right as much as she can to make things the best they can be for others in the end... 

but I still wanted her to just cling onto Romeo & die entwined in Bracewells lovely arms!! 

Edited January 2, 2020 by Peanut68
Typo

[Jan McNulty]

Q?

[Peanut68]

Question....sorry my shorthand amidst terrible typos - sorry! 

Edited January 2, 2020 by Peanut68
Typo!!

[Ivy Lin]

I saw this (don't ask how but I did). I thought it was overall well done. I only objected to a few things: 1) the wind machine during the balcony scene. Thought it was overdone and really obvious. And 2) the shooting behind the bars in the crypt scene. I thought it was a good visual metaphor at first (R&J are now locked in forever) but I would have only used the bars in the beginning and the end, not the entire scene. Thought it obscured some of the most expressive moments of the ballet. 

 

I thought Hayward was absolutely beautiful and the outdoor setting worked very well.

[nycitybird]

I saw an interview where Francesca Hayward said there was no wind machine, that was the actual wind!

[alison]

It's left me wondering what the physical constraints of filming in the "crypt" were, I must admit.

[Richard LH]

4 hours ago, Ivy Lin said:

the wind machine during the balcony scene. Thought it was overdone and really obvious.

It was real wind !

[Pas de Quatre]

Having read various opinions on this thread I wasn't hoping for too much, but was still rather disappointed.  It wasn't the dancers - they were all gorgeous, but I found much of the way it was filmed rather misconceived.  The art of ballet is making shapes with the body and moving through space, either as a solo dancer or in relation to another dancer or group of dancers (and of course the music).  I very much disliked the way that cutting from one dancer to another in close up removed any relationship between them.  You wondered if some these bits had been filmed separately, with only one of them present and then edited together.  Also some of the camera angles seemd odd.  MacMillan was a master Choreographer, if he set a sequence of steps on diagonal, he knew how it would be seen from the auditorium, and filming head on as if in the front wing just forshortened the line.  There are lots of other examples, too numerous to mention.  The ending didn't work for me at all either.  Instead of a magnificent tragedy, it seemed more like a melodramatic B movie.

 

At times it also seemed rather fast and a bit jerky.  Was this just the restless camera, or had the action been speeded up a little, the way that they used to speed up galoping horses in Westerns because they didn't look dynamic enough? 

[alison]

The tempo of the recording of the score was faster than has been usual recently.

[Janite]

The recent radio interview explain this. It is the 'In Touch' one on the radio 4 thread. 

10 hours ago, alison said:

The tempo of the recording of the score was faster than has been usual recently.

 

[Sim]

I watched this again last night, and it does indeed look gorgeous.  The young dancers are beautiful in all ways, and the realism puts a different slant on the ballet.  However, my main gripe (bearing in mind that this is not for us, but probably for people who aren't familiar with the ballet or with ballet in general) is that it is all too rushed.  I know that about half an hour has been cut from the actual dancing, but this is to the detriment of the narrative.  Many people moan about how boring the crowd scenes are, but MacMillan (a choreographic genius imho) knew just what he was doing.  Aside from simply respecting Prokofiev's score by filling every note, he also knew that by letting things unfold in good time the audience has a chance to observe all the characters and goings-on, from the warring Capulets and Montagues at the beginning, right the way through.  This aids in being able to figure out who is on which side, and the depth of hatred between the families.  These things are all rushed in the film, and scenes change so quickly that there isn't time to ascertain who all the characters are and what their relationships are to each other.  The music is also too rushed for my liking. 

 

I didn't particularly like, as I mentioned upthread, much of Juliet's act being obscured by curtains and gauze.  The first meeting alone scene, balcony scene, the crypt scene...all are filmed through foliage, curtains and bars, as if the audience is a voyeur.  Maybe that's the point.  Others have mentioned the choreography getting swallowed up in the filming, and I agree with this.  However, aside from simply filming a stage performance, I think this is inevitable, and nothing could ever have the impact of a live performance on a large stage.

 

Hayward and Bracewell are utterly convincing as the very young lovers, with the mutual attraction being entirely believable.  Marcelino Sambe is another highlight, with incredible dancing and a very moving death scene.  Matthew Ball's Tybalt is sarcastic and menacing;  a wonderful portrayal that he built on and knocked most of us for six with in his stage performances last season.  Romany Pajdak is a lovely nurse (although my hubby, who studied Shakespeare at uni, thought she was too young and pretty to be the nurse as portrayed in the play).  Kristen McNally is a very empathetic Lady C....her devastation at Tybalt's death is visceral and disturbing, and I really felt that she understands where Juliet is coming from when she refuses to marry Paris.  Sadly, I don't think her interpretation was matched by Christopher Saunders' Lord C.  He didn't make an impact on me;  he didn't really make Lord C's powerful presence felt, nor instil the terror that drives Juliet to run to Friar Laurence.  Gary Avis would have been a much better choice as far as I'm concerned. 

 

Having said all this, I think it was a very good first go at this kind of thing, especially as it was all filmed over just five days.  I will be very interested to see their future projects.

 

 

[bridiem]

8 minutes ago, Sim said:

I watched this again last night, and it does indeed look gorgeous.  The young dancers are beautiful in all ways, and the realism puts a different slant on the ballet.  However, my main gripe (bearing in mind that this is not for us, but probably for people who aren't familiar with the ballet or with ballet in general) is that it is all too rushed.  I know that about half an hour has been cut from the actual dancing, but this is to the detriment of the narrative. 

 

I agree with this, and I think there's some illogicality in the way the film has been presented. I read/heard various puffs for it that described it as 'the story that everyone knows'. Presumably on that basis, there was no synopsis or introduction of the characters at all. And yet it was also presumably aimed at newcomers to ballet who will not have understood balletic conventions and how they may make the story potentially less clear (to a newcomer) unless you DO have a synopsis and keep your wits about you, especially in a truncated version of the work. And unless they've studied it at school I doubt very much that 'everyone' does know the detail of the story anyway, other than that the 'star cross'd lovers' both die in the end. I think that knowing who was who would have been very challenging for a newcomer. And in particular, I felt as if the big plot weakness of MacMillan's R&J, i.e. the fact that we don't know why Romeo doesn't know that Juliet isn't dead, was amplified in this version because of the speed of it all; in fact, without a familiarity with balletic storytelling and given the absence of a synopsis I'm not sure how viewers themselves were supposed to know for sure (if they didn't already know) that Juliet wasn't dead.

 

Anyway, as I said further up I really enjoyed the film; but I don't think I was the target market. It would be very interesting to hear the reactions of newcomers to ballet and/or to the play. I think the only review I've seen was by a ballet critic, which doesn't really help!

[maryrosesatonapin]

I agree that every point of the story isn't clear, but the kind of people who would choose to watch a ballet film whether at the cinema or at home, yet were not normal ballet fans, would very likely know the story either from school or previous films.   And if they missed some of the detail but were receptive to the overall beauty and tragedy, maybe that is a price worth paying for a reasonable length of film.  Many would be happy to watch for 90 minutes but not have the appetite for two hours.  I think we have to accept that a 'realistic' ballet film will trade off clarity of choreography for intimacy and naturalism, and we need to think of it as a different type of event altogether from an ROH performance.  It is still a very small film in a big film world though and I wish it had more exposure and a bigger audience.  People don't know what they are missing.

I would add that although there were many good performances in this film, its charm relied heavily on Hayward's appearance.  With the close-ups expected in film, you can't get away with older-looking or less beautiful dancers playing the part of young heroes/heroines even though they might look fine on stage.  

[capybara]

2 hours ago, maryrosesatonapin said:

I would add that although there were many good performances in this film, its charm relied heavily on Hayward's appearance.  With the close-ups expected in film, you can't get away with older-looking or less beautiful dancers playing the part of young heroes/heroines even though they might look fine on stage.  

 

 I don't get your drift on this point. I felt that those in charge of casting the other main characters (Romeo, Mercutio, Tybalt, Benvolio) had the photogenic qualities of the  dancers very much in mind. In fact, Tybalt was cast much younger than is usual and I personally found Romeo's face youthful and beautifully expressive, although he could have done with a shorter fringe and the camera lingering on him rather more (especially at the outset in order to establish who Romeo was).

[maryrosesatonapin]

2 hours ago, capybara said:

 

 I don't get your drift on this point. I felt that those in charge of casting the other main characters (Romeo, Mercutio, Tybalt, Benvolio) had the photogenic qualities of the  dancers very much in mind. In fact, Tybalt was cast much younger than is usual and I personally found Romeo's face youthful and beautifully expressive, although he could have done with a shorter fringe and the camera lingering on him rather more (especially at the outset in order to establish who Romeo was).

Oh, I completely agree!  I was thinking ahead to future possible films... in that dancers we love on stage might not look as good on film as Hayward et al unless the casting was careful, as it was here.  And for me, Ball stole the show looks-wise both in his personal appearance and beguilingly menacing manner.

[Dawnstar]

3 hours ago, capybara said:

In fact, Tybalt was cast much younger than is usual

 

I don't know what is usual for Tybalt, as last season's R&J run was the first time I've seen the MacMillan version (I did see the ENB Nureyev one over a decade ago but can't recall the age of that Tybalt), but given his cousin Juliet is 14 then him being fairly young would seem logical. Certainly on stage I felt it made more sense to have a young Tybalt - Ball - scrapping with the similarly-aged Montague young men rather than a man considerably older than them - Avis, Whitehead, Kish - behaving like that, and, with the close-ups, even more so in the film.

[Bravissima35]

I enjoyed it a lot and thought Francesca Haywood lit up the screen.  Some of the filming was interesting and although some things looked a bit odd I think being able to film from all angles was something different and will be improved on the more they do. 

 

It did make me notice things I hadn't seen in the Stage production and I liked that in the tomb scene Haywood was not wearing point shoes. 

 

Hope they go on to film Manon and Mayerling.

 

[Scheherezade]

I thought it worked marvellously well within it’s necessarily different medium. The characterisation was natural and compelling and the overall effect was extraordinarily moving.

No surprise at all that Hayward marked her performance with such heartbreaking luminosity but, my goodness, weren’t the boys good? And at the risk of lowering the tone of this discussion, did no-one else pick up on how extraordinarily handsome they all looked? Even more do on the big screen... Phew, I must be getting old!

[Jeannette]

Thanks for all of the reports. I can’t wait to see this in the US!

[JohnS]

I managed to get round to watching this having been very interested in all the posts on the thread and have to say I found Romeo and Juliet: Beyond Words wonderful.  Different from being in the theatre but to me it complemented last year’s performances.  Loved all the dancers and what luxury casting - not only the main cast but Laura Morera as lead harlot (the Royal Opera House performance database shows Laura dancing a Harlot 48 times from 2001 to 2011 and it may be that there are other performances not on the database).  I enjoyed the camera work and thought the ending incredibly moving - Juliet’s one hand as she tries to reach Romeo, lifeless her second hand falls, then her hair.  I’d certainly buy a DVD if one’s released and many congratulations to all involved.

[JennyTaylor]

I've watched this several times now and am beguiled every time. I think you need to take it for what it is and enjoy it and try to forget that you don't see the dancers' feet all the time, and as you would on the stage.

So much is enhanced with the opportunity to expand the backdrops, particularly the fight scenes, plus all the close ups of the dancers' expressions. For me too, it is a luxury cast with Francesca Hayward and Will Bracewell the perfect casting. I know we all have our favourite R&J's but they SO look the part, and their dancing is so beautiful. Glorious to see their expressions in close up. I was brought up in my teens with the Zeffirelli R&J which I still see as the ultimate Shakespeare R&J.  This reminds me of that production - trying to be true to the age of the characters and so pure. .

As for Matthew Ball as Tybalt - is it possible to smoulder better than he does?  The film gives him more scope to characterise and I thought he was electric when I saw him on stage. This is even better.

Then we have the glorious James Hay and Marcelino Sambe as Benvolio and Mercutio. Always my pick on stage and the film does capture their dancing and their acting and the fun they create.

Biggest regret? The fact that we miss all the steps of the 3 boys in their scene with the Nurse. I love that scene, but the full impact is lost without seeing their feet, because the steps are part of the fun.    

Biggest revelation - Tomas Mock as Paris.  Really empathetic performance - brought this very difficult part to life. Depicted far better on film that on stage   

[Dawnstar]

1 hour ago, JennyTaylor said:

Biggest revelation - Tomas Mock as Paris.  Really empathetic performance - brought this very difficult part to life. Depicted far better on film that on stage   

 

I thought Mock as Paris came over very well on stage too. I saw 4 dancers in the role during the last run & he was the only one who I thought made the character likeable & sympathetic.

[alison]

Whether "likeable and sympathetic" is what you want from a Paris might be debatable, though  

[Jan McNulty]

9 hours ago, alison said:

Whether "likeable and sympathetic" is what you want from a Paris might be debatable, though  

I’ve seen, over many years and a number of productions, a lot of likeable and sympathetic Parises.  I actually think it makes for a more poignant and powerful act 3 when he is so hurt at Juliet’s rejection.

[Sim]

39 minutes ago, Jan McNulty said:

I’ve seen, over many years and a number of productions, a lot of likeable and sympathetic Parises.  I actually think it makes for a more poignant and powerful act 3 when he is so hurt at Juliet’s rejection.

And it also makes his murder much more poignant and tragic.  He loved Juliet, and paid for it with his life.   

[bangorballetboy]

10 hours ago, alison said:

Whether "likeable and sympathetic" is what you want from a Paris might be debatable, though  

I know lots of likeable and sympathetic people but I don’t want to marry them.