Bolshoi 'Spartacus' reviews 'Spartacus' reviews Acosta in reviews recent Bolshoi reviews more Wulff reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months) Gallery of Photographs

I have to say that I was not disappointed in Acosta's performance; the role really does suit his physical abilities and he met its considerable demands in a spectacular fashion. In fact the entire cast rose to the requirements of this most exhausting of ballets with enormous energy and was greeted with huge applause.

But what of the work itself? Here I continue to have serious misgivings about its credibility as a major choreographic creation. Not long after curtain up I was thinking "Nuremburg Rally goes to Hollywood". All that goosestepping, marching and countermarching, not only by the baddies but the goodies as well, are disturbingly reminiscent of the mass effects used in many a rally in a totalitarian state, and it seems to me that Grigorovitch is not parodying or commenting upon such effects, but using them to drive his own ballet along, and combined with Khachaturian's almost consistently loud and rhytmic music virtually to bludgeon the audience into uncritical acceptance of what, it seems to me, is a rampant piece of Soviet propaganda.

Apart from the Roman costumes, the designs give only the vaguest indication of place or period, the characters are two dimensional cardboard cut-outs with no real depth or opportunity for development, and are confined to a repertoire of old-fashioned stock histrionic gestures and facial expressions which would not be out of place in Mr Crummles's group of travelling players.

Choreographically the vocabulary is limited, relying heavily on the more spectacular steps from the male repertoire, and is highly repetitious. It is an almost odds-on bet that if a line of dancers marches or jetes one way across the stage they will immediately return to do so in the opposite direction. If a dancer performs a particular step or brief enchainement, it is almost a certainty that he/she will repeat it not only once but many times in sequence. Nor do the pas de deux fare any better, as they fail to display any genuine emotion or tenderness, but consist largely in runs, catches, or the male dancer hoisting his partner into a series of spectacularly vertiginous lifts.

And yet, this ballet is a huge audience pleaser. Why? Well, I think that Grigorovitch knew exactly what he was doing in appropriating for his own ends those techniques of mass movements and display that have proved so potent in political rallies and have fired up people to do and believe things that otherwise might not have occured to them to do and believe. In short, I see this as a highly manipulative piece of theatre, and to those who would say that it represents a profound theatrical experience I would say, "Sorry folks; you've been conned.... By a master manipulator".