A Night at the Ballet

Our seats were right in the front row of the mezzanine. We settled into the plush velvet with pre-concert excitement. Romeo and Juliet would undoubtedly be amazing. Ruth was looking down towards the pit to see if the harpist was her friend Barbara who played with ABT. I was looking too but the chandeliers were right in the line of vision. They hadn’t been raised up yet. We craned our necks.

“You can’t do that,” said a thick Long Island accent behind us. Of-course we could, the concert hadn’t begun, not nearly. People were still finding their seats. We turned to see the woman responsible for this remark. If I had to describe her in a police line-up, I don’t think I could. She was bland at best and sitting with her two equally bland, long-suffering friends. All three looked the same, dressed and spoke the same. I’d already overheard some of their boastful banter about which Brawdway shows they’d seen and formed a less than impressive image of them.

“You can’t move around like that in heah.” She repeated.  I struggled with saying, “Shut up, you old bag,” so I just thought it, loudly.

“I do understand those protocols, I’m a musician,” Ruth shot up at her. We exchanged a WTF look and tried to ignore the irritation as it inched up our spines.

Soon, the calming voice announced over the intercom, for everyone to please silence their cell-phones. The chandeliers rose upwards and the lights dimmed, and the voice, that voice, said, “Cell phones, turn off yaw cell phones,” to anyone or everyone around her.

Oh…My…God! the back of my head fired lasers in her direction, as the overture began. In the darkness, those opening chords, the rolling drums, silenced even the dumbest of humans. Dissonance then soft and melodic, then in comes the powerful giant-striding bass, the sweeping strings, woodwinds and horns describing the story before it’s played out. We all know the tragedy, know that it’s coming and with musical anticipation, we feel it.

This was my night with Ruth. The tickets were her gift to me and it was an honor to share with each other and be on the receiving end of such artistic greatness. Prokofiev’s music could stand alone but the dancers’ interpretation of the story, gave color to the scenes and settings in subtle imagery. Love at first sight amidst feuding families, fights to the death, secret marriage, the plan to elope and the plot builds towards its climactic end.

During intermission, I went off to stretch my legs, Ruth went down to the pit to chat to the musicians and we returned to our cozy seats for Acts lll and lV. The final act as Shakespeare had written it, where life and love expires in one fatal misunderstanding. Love is pure, love is pain and it’s to die for quite literally. The desperation, the futility, the tenderness and passion. Even the most cynical of hearts would be moved by the scene of the two lovers on the bed.

Then, in the quietest of moments the audience captivated, the cell phone went off. Not once, but twice, a loud obnoxious ringtone. The whole of the mezzanine turned to look. It was her. A frantic inept fumble began. “I don’t know how,” she whispered. Her friend fixed it for her. We all groaned, a silent, angry groan.

The lovers rise and dance. We wait for the poison to be drunk. We wait for the knife. The ending has already been obliterated.