After the first visit to Castrum and Praetorium cutscenes should just auto-skip for everyone.. they put an NPC into the Inn who can show you all the cutscenes again for a reason. I was really pissed too when I got constantly pestered and flamed when I wanted to watch the cutscenes during my first run through Praetorium, but only later learned the place is actually challenging and long enough for fresh 50s that you actually need all the time that the cutscenes waste (mainly for 3rd last boss), and even then we only beat it with about 3 minutes left.

As long as someone is watching cutscenes, at the very least the timer should stop.