The Royal Ballet

If you could get past the snarling scrooges at the box office and forget about the corrugated cardboard barn that is Boston's memorial to war, you were in for one of this spring's purer aesthetic moments. Britain's Royal Ballet was in town last week.

The Royal Ballet, which old fans still nostalgically refer to as the Sadler's Wells Ballet, opened with Romeo and Juiet. The company has filmed the ballet with Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn, truly the most remarkable pair in the ballet world. Dame Morgot, now 48, dances the role of the 14-year-old Juliet with an unmatchable combination of grace and young ardor. Nureyev has often been likened to the legendary Nijinsky, le Dieu de la Danse, as the Edwardians called him before he went mad.

Merle Park and Antony Dowell danced Romeo and Juliet Wednesday. They had the powerful ghosts of Nureyev's Romeo and Fonteyn's Juliet to contend with, but they emerged more than successful. While Dowell lacks Nureyev's muchnoised animal magnetism and Miss Park misses Fonteyn's poise, they give the parts a charm and sincerity which explain well Shakespeare's rather sudden and convoluted plot.

In his choreography, Kenneth MacMillan has been slavishly faithful to Shakespeare and the result is moments which are almost more dramatic than the master's version. The balcony and tombstone scenes are among the most exciting moments of any art form. But MacMillian may have been almost too faithful to the manuscript there are a number of scenes in front of the Capulets' home for instance, which have no value at all to the action of the ballet.

They tell me that the second program with Paradise Lost, a new ballet which choreographer Roland Petit created especially for Nureyev and Fonteyn, was an exciting evening's worth. We didn't manage to get beyond the box office.

Saturday the company danced its version of Swan Lake, which may surpass the Bolshoi's. One of the longest and most poignant classical ballets, inherited almost unaltered from Petipa and the nineteenth century Imperial Russian ballet, it provides the British company the ideal opportunity to show off its greatest strength -- the corps de ballet.

Svetlana Berisosova was a sad and delicate odette and a scheming, wicked odile. Nureyev partnered her as the prince, but this is not a ballet that offers much to the male lead. Apart from two rather breathtaking grand jetes, his performance Saturday was an unsatisfying demonstration of what have been acclaimed as remarkable talents.

A visit by the Royal Ballet leaves one with one wish -- that Boston could show itself a more gracious host.