You always remember your first time, don’t you? And in ballet one imagines that Juliet wants to remember her first Romeo as a thunderclap. So the Royal Ballet’s director Kevin O’Hare, for reasons best known to himself, gives the most exciting new young star the Royal Ballet has seen for years the role of Juliet and…Matthew Golding as Romeo.
And so it was that Francesca Hayward’s mesmerising debut in this most prized of all Royal ballerina roles will be remembered as a bomb exploding in a vacuum. This Juliet will have to hunt for a new Romeo to find her match; she will have better nights to remember than that first one, which should have been so precious. While we, the public, can only grind our teeth in frustration at such a casting cock-up.
My aspersions on the tall, fit Golding are not on his toothsomeness (who could fault toothsomeness in a Romeo?) as much as on the fact that he fits a too prevalent WYSIWYG category at the post-MacMillan Royal Ballet.
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