Black Sabbath-The Ballet

Festival Theatre 30/10/25

Birmingham Royal Ballet, director Carlos Acosta

Royal Ballet Sinfonia, conductor Paul Murphy

As a Black Country girl who spent a decade living in Birmingham, I was aware of the hallowed status of Black Sabbath, the founding fathers of heavy metal. So I decided I ought to see a ballet about them. I searched for my black eyeliner, which I last used in 1975, to no avail. What to wear? All black, obviously.

A clue to the nature of the evening’s performance at the Festival Theatre was the serried ranks of giant speakers on either side and above the stage. Not a chamber concert, then. The curtain rose on a dark stage, lit with several spotlights, with the sound of air raid sirens. Postwar Birmingham with its heavy industry was a fitting birthplace for the dark, brooding sound of heavy metal, real working-class music.

Musical influences on the band included blues, jazz, psychedelia, and Gustav Holst, in particular ‘Mars, the Bringer of War’ from his orchestral suite ‘The Planets’ Opus 32. In their eponymous debut album, the title track ‘Black Sabbath’ featured the jarring musical tritone also known as diabolus in musica or ‘the devil's interval’ supposedly banned by the church in the Middle Ages.

 The ballet’s three acts (‘Heavy Metal Ballet’, ‘The Band’, ‘Everybody is a Fan’) each paired a different team of composer and choreographer and featured different groups of dancers.The impressively symphonic score was played with enthusiasm by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, conducted by Paul Murphy. The music seamlessly combined original Sabbath pieces such as ‘War Pigs’, ‘Paranoid’, and ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ with new compositions by the three composers based on themes from Sabbath’s works.

 The musicians were not confined to the orchestra. The audience roared in response to intricate guitar solos from dancer and musician Marc Hayward, revelling in his role as a guitar hero. Dancer and singer Lachlan Monaghan delivered the songs with passion. But despite its boisterous and zestful nature, the ballet was careful not to tip over into tribute act territory. The Black Sabbath story has elements of eternal drama: tragedy, triumph, more tragedy, more triumph, and lots of drugs. There’s also humour. In Nashville, Ozzy scattered a group of Satanists holding candles and chanting by blowing out the candles and singing “Happy birthday”.

 The audience was made up of ballet fans rocking to the music and Sabbath fans enraptured by the dance. The juxtaposition of heavy metal with classical artistry was irresistible, and the finale with the entire cast dancing and singing was utterly uplifting. It is not often that you leave a ballet with your ears ringing. This was a spectacular evening of ballet and heavy metal combined by the alchemical visionary Carlos Acosta in the crucible that is the Birmingham Royal Ballet.