The Royal Ballet: Onegin

The Royal Ballet & Opera, London
January 22, 2025

You have to hand it to John Cranko, he certainly knew how to tell a story. It’s easy to see why his Onegin is such an audience favourite. His telling of Alexander Pushkin’s verse-drama is clean and economical, but also an emotional rollercoaster. With its finely-drawn lead characters, all flawed in one way or another, the ballet is a wonderful vehicle for dance-actors, for whom the choreography and libretto leave fair room for interpretation. Not a moment is wasted. Every solo, pas de deux or ensemble dance moves the story along. If that wasn’t enough. there’s then Kurt-Heinz Stolze’s wonderful arrangement of music from various Tchaikovsky scores and Jurgen Rose’s atmospheric designs.

Cranko’s great skill with Onegin himself is in leaving just enough room in the character for us to feel a smidgeon of sympathy for him, even though we dislike and even find repellent so much of his character.

Reece Clarke as Onegin and Marianela Nuñez as Tatiana in Onegin
Photo Royal Ballet & Opera/Andrej Uspenski

In the title role on opening night was the tall, dark, handsome Reece Clarke. In many ways, he’s everything you expect Onegin to be. But while aloof and self-absorbed in Act I, he gave us one of more genial interpretations, with relatively little sense of depth or complexity. He certainly didn’t smoulder as much as some. Clarke is a fine partner though, and made light work of the complicated lifts and throws with which Cranko typically peppers the Mirror pas de deux in particular.

Clarke really came into his own at the ball, when his flirting with Akane Takada’s Olga led to confrontation and sparks flying with William Bracewell’s Lensky, her fiancé. Onegin’s later attempts to call the duel off and his remorse at killing his friend afterwards seemed very real. And in Act III, he appeared suitably world weary, and a man whose life wounds were there for all to see.

Lukas Bjørneboe Brændsrød as Prince Gremin and Marianela Nuñez as Tatiana
in Act III of John Cranko’s Onegin
Photo Royal Ballet & Opera/Andrej Uspenski

As Tatiana, Marianela Nuñez similarly grew as the ballet progressed. In the opening, scenes, she establishes well Tatiana’s bookish self and is suitably puppyish as she follows Onegin around with her big doleful eyes, but I struggled a little to see her as the still only seventeen-year-old she’s supposed to be.

Needless to say, her dancing was absolutely secure. As she dreams of Onegin in her bedroom, her feelings let rip as she surfed dramatically the waves of emotion crashing over her, although there did seem to be the occasional split-second here and there when flow was lost, when she didn’t naturally and seamlessly sweep into a lift, losing some of the impact in the process.

Imperial elegance
The Royal Ballet in John Cranko’s Onegin
Photo Royal Ballet & Opera/Andrej Uspenski

In contrast, her several-years-later Act III pas de deux with Lukas Bjørneboe Brændsrød’s Prince Gremin was a thing of sublime beauty. The deeply tender and physically pliant dance may not have the wild abandon of that earlier bedroom scene but then it doesn’t need to. Nuñez oozed contentment and happiness. It was the highlight of the evening.

Except, that is, for the final scene. It’s now Onegin who expresses vividly his love. At first, Tatiana is absolutely unwilling, the clinging Onegin dragged behind her as she tries to move away. Then, a very obviously gradual thawing before she gives into to former feelings reawakened. Probably fortunately, she sees sense and delivers the ultimate table-turning gesture as she tears his letter up. But even then, Nuñez leaves everyone in no doubt there’s still regret.

Akane Takada as Olga with William Bracewell as Lensky in Onegin
Photo Royal Ballet & Opera/Andrej Uspenski

In total contrast to her older sister, Takada is a carefree, pretty, flighty, girlish Olga. She danced with lovely clarity and precision throughout. Her anguish in the duel scene, her pain at his falling, hinted powerfully of an underlying feeling that her going along with Onegin’s playing with her at the ball made her at least partly complicit in what followed.

Bracewell is a super Lensky. At the ball, he judged his transition from happy partygoer through simmering to boiling over at Onegin’s approaches to Olga to perfection. And his pre-duel solo, in which he dances his own lament, knowing you sense that his life is about to be cut short, was full of desperation and fear.

The corps shone in the opening and closing acts. The peasant dances of Act I are a delight, with the grand jetés crossing the stage on the diagonal a highlight. The rather more formal Polonaise at the St Petersburg ball in Act III is as elegant as it comes.

The Royal Ballet perform John Cranko’s Onegin at The Royal Ballet and Opera to June 12, 2025.