Conducted by Anthony Parthner, Special Guest Massamba Diop on Talking Drum, Performed by the Chineke! Orchestra.

Royal Albert Hall, May 27, 2023

T’Challa lives once more in this immersive take on the first Black Panther movie.

Black Panther is a movie with one of the more unique scores in the MCU, but then it’s one of the more unique entries in that pantheon. If you were somehow unaware of that uniqueness, or of just how important to the movie’s themes and tones its score is, then this live performance would leave you in little doubt.

As is standard for these events, the film was presented with subtitles. In every previous performance I have attended, these have been unnecessary. Here, they were essential, with whole lines of dialogue being literally swamped by the music in the room, lost underneath the unique cadence of the talking drum and the sheer passion of the rest of the orchestra. No bad thing, because this is a hell of a score.

The subtitles may have been the only standard thing. Anthony Parthner, unlike any other conductor I’ve seen at these events, was happy to be a real star of the show, spending a good ten minutes before the performance speaking to the audience, drumming up their enthusiasm and telling jokes and anecdotes. Where this could have distracted from why we were all there, Parthner is a genuinely charming and funny host, and it was delightful to see him in action, getting us all fired up.

That energy was matched in the performance itself by Massamba Diop, the special guest responsible for the actual talking drums on the original movie score. It felt quite incredible to see one man with on instrument produce such a wide-ranging and vital part of the score, and his energy was incredible, even finding time for a bit of solo interaction with the audience at the end of the credits, instigating an Albert Hall-wide clap-themed participation as a final parting gift before positively bounding off the stage presumably to get some rest before doing it all over again a couple of hours later for the evening showing.

As to the movie itself, it’s still as wonderfully entertaining as ever, full of raw emotion, laughs and a whole lot of poignancy as we watch the late Chadwick Boseman deliver his most iconic onscreen performance. The format of these showings, with an interval break, served to highlight how fast-paced the movie is, and moreover how much story it tells in such a compact, elegant timeframe. If it has a flaw, it’s that it perhaps has to push forward too quickly with Killmonger’s arc, having him take over Wakanda and set about his plan for world domination a little too quickly. You could argue this sits well with the simmering anger which permeates every second of Michael B Jordan’s performance, but because he’s so good every time he’s on the screen, like Andy Serkis as Klaue, clearly having the time of his life, it can’t help but feel like we could and perhaps should have had more time with him.

Still, it’s a two hour and fifteen minute movie that positively flies by, and enhanced by the presence of the live orchestra, it was an experience I feel privileged to have had for one of my favourite MCU entries.

Verdict: A genuine shakeup of the standard format for these performances – I hope that the Royal Albert Hall does more stuff like this going forward. 9/10

Greg D. Smith