Birmingham Royal Ballet Black Sabbath The Ballet Festival Theatre Edinburgh 30th October 2025 Review
Birmingham Royal Ballet “Black Sabbath - The Ballet” is at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh until Saturday 01 November, and financially this production is a safe bet for everyone involved, as here, like everywhere else this show has been performed, the faithful legion of Black Sabbath music fans are coming out for their much needed musical fix.
This is a crossover arts event as iconic rock music meets the BRB’s world of classical and contemporary dance, so this audience demographic may not be as clearly defined as you might imagine. It is always a mistake to assume that anyone who likes a particular genre of music looks or dresses in any particular way, and this audience reinforces that belief. Here there were no endless rows of people who looked like they were going to a Heavy Metal concert, but from the moment the curtain rose on this production it was obvious that the music of Black Sabbath was very special to many people here tonight.
The age range of people in this audience was also worth noting – a lot of people old enough to have been around at the very beginning of this music, but also a lot of people far too young to have done that. Maybe this is a clue as to why there is even a “Black Sabbath - The Ballet” at all – so much of this music is now set in stone with every new generation discovering at least some of it for themselves and, oddly, finding something new in the old.
For myself, I have to admit now in this review that I have never been a Black Sabbath fan. I don’t dislike their music, in fact I can appreciate it on many different levels, and songs like “War Pigs” and “Paranoid” are simply iconic classic rock songs. There will probably never be again anyone who can sound even remotely like Ozzy Osbourne on vocals – they are truly unique. For me, it is simply that other musical genres have taken my attention first over the years. For me then, this show was not so much a celebration of the music of Black Sabbath, but an exploration of it.
“Black Sabbath – The Musical” was conceived by Carlos Acosta, director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, and the synergy between the band, BRB, and the city of Birmingham is an obvious one. Black Sabbath will probably always be THE Birmingham band, and their story of working class boys who broke out of what people expected of them (or never expected of them to be more precise), to become global rock stars is the stuff of dreams and legends. For Carlos Acosta, this must have been the dream production as this one had a built in audience before it even took to planning and rehearsals.
I have always been impressed by the work of Carlos Acosta, whether that be as a dancer, a choreographer or, like here, a conceptual creator, as there is always something special about his work. The work of Carlos Acosta is always full of grace and beauty on-stage and, on this project which has Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi on-board as music consultant the stage was set for something very special to happen in “Black Sabbath – The Ballet”, but did it? The answer to that question is yes and no, and to what degree this is depends upon your personal perspective of this work as a whole.
There are a lot of creatives involved in this work, and maybe that itself is where some of the problems, for me anyhow, start to emerge. This ballet is a work in three parts, each with a different choreographer and a different combination of musical arrangers of the original Black Sabbath songs plus new music for some of the dance itself. Each part is very different too.
Opening the show is the unmistakable voice of Ozzy Osbourne cutting through the air like a knife on the opening lines of “War Pigs”. Very quickly a “guitar spirit” takes to the stage to bring everyone “his sound”. With iconic songs “War Pigs”, “Iron Man”, “Solitude” and “Paranoid” featured (or referenced) here, the musical tone for what is to come is firmly established. Amidst all of this we have the story of sounds of the Birmingham factories and two couples in different stages of their relationship.
The next two Acts focus on the chaotic drug years of the band and the theme that everyone is a fan. However, despite some very distinctive and iconic Black Sabbath visuals and work by the dancers of BRB, there is something missing for me, something that is just not unifying all of these very distinctive performances together for me in a linear narrative.
Despite the voice-over quotes about the band and its members there is still so much more of this story and the music that I wanted to hear, so many more questions left unanswered. Taking the role of the “Guitar Spirit” on-stage is guitarist Marc Hayward, and he is a very competent guitarist, but with no disrespect to him, I suspect that any good Black Sabbath tribute band who had the looks and the technical abilities as musicians would have got much the same audience response as he did tonight. The big question in a show like this is always, “who exactly is the audience responding to?” and tonight that seemed split between music fans and dance fans.
One of the most interesting aspects of tonight’s show for me was watching the orchestra and realising just how much creativity has gone into re-arranging the music of Black Sabbath for this ballet.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
This is a crossover arts event as iconic rock music meets the BRB’s world of classical and contemporary dance, so this audience demographic may not be as clearly defined as you might imagine. It is always a mistake to assume that anyone who likes a particular genre of music looks or dresses in any particular way, and this audience reinforces that belief. Here there were no endless rows of people who looked like they were going to a Heavy Metal concert, but from the moment the curtain rose on this production it was obvious that the music of Black Sabbath was very special to many people here tonight.
The age range of people in this audience was also worth noting – a lot of people old enough to have been around at the very beginning of this music, but also a lot of people far too young to have done that. Maybe this is a clue as to why there is even a “Black Sabbath - The Ballet” at all – so much of this music is now set in stone with every new generation discovering at least some of it for themselves and, oddly, finding something new in the old.
For myself, I have to admit now in this review that I have never been a Black Sabbath fan. I don’t dislike their music, in fact I can appreciate it on many different levels, and songs like “War Pigs” and “Paranoid” are simply iconic classic rock songs. There will probably never be again anyone who can sound even remotely like Ozzy Osbourne on vocals – they are truly unique. For me, it is simply that other musical genres have taken my attention first over the years. For me then, this show was not so much a celebration of the music of Black Sabbath, but an exploration of it.
“Black Sabbath – The Musical” was conceived by Carlos Acosta, director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, and the synergy between the band, BRB, and the city of Birmingham is an obvious one. Black Sabbath will probably always be THE Birmingham band, and their story of working class boys who broke out of what people expected of them (or never expected of them to be more precise), to become global rock stars is the stuff of dreams and legends. For Carlos Acosta, this must have been the dream production as this one had a built in audience before it even took to planning and rehearsals.
I have always been impressed by the work of Carlos Acosta, whether that be as a dancer, a choreographer or, like here, a conceptual creator, as there is always something special about his work. The work of Carlos Acosta is always full of grace and beauty on-stage and, on this project which has Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi on-board as music consultant the stage was set for something very special to happen in “Black Sabbath – The Ballet”, but did it? The answer to that question is yes and no, and to what degree this is depends upon your personal perspective of this work as a whole.
There are a lot of creatives involved in this work, and maybe that itself is where some of the problems, for me anyhow, start to emerge. This ballet is a work in three parts, each with a different choreographer and a different combination of musical arrangers of the original Black Sabbath songs plus new music for some of the dance itself. Each part is very different too.
Opening the show is the unmistakable voice of Ozzy Osbourne cutting through the air like a knife on the opening lines of “War Pigs”. Very quickly a “guitar spirit” takes to the stage to bring everyone “his sound”. With iconic songs “War Pigs”, “Iron Man”, “Solitude” and “Paranoid” featured (or referenced) here, the musical tone for what is to come is firmly established. Amidst all of this we have the story of sounds of the Birmingham factories and two couples in different stages of their relationship.
The next two Acts focus on the chaotic drug years of the band and the theme that everyone is a fan. However, despite some very distinctive and iconic Black Sabbath visuals and work by the dancers of BRB, there is something missing for me, something that is just not unifying all of these very distinctive performances together for me in a linear narrative.
Despite the voice-over quotes about the band and its members there is still so much more of this story and the music that I wanted to hear, so many more questions left unanswered. Taking the role of the “Guitar Spirit” on-stage is guitarist Marc Hayward, and he is a very competent guitarist, but with no disrespect to him, I suspect that any good Black Sabbath tribute band who had the looks and the technical abilities as musicians would have got much the same audience response as he did tonight. The big question in a show like this is always, “who exactly is the audience responding to?” and tonight that seemed split between music fans and dance fans.
One of the most interesting aspects of tonight’s show for me was watching the orchestra and realising just how much creativity has gone into re-arranging the music of Black Sabbath for this ballet.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com