Spectacularly exciting, beautifully danced, massively involving, Northern Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet is filled with tender emotion, deep despair and fiery rage. Deeply expressive acting and dance skills create believable, engrossing characters who take us with them every step of the tragic – or sometimes comic – way.
The exhilarating impact of Prokofiev’s powerful, compelling music never fails to move and delight, and the Northern Ballet Sinfonia, under Daniel Parkinson, does a sterling job in the pit (though recordings will be used at later stages of the tour). The arrangement’s soaring, melodious joy and pathos, its dissonant, doom-laden forebodings and suspensions, assertive clashes, electrifying screeches and overall oomph do much to enhance the atmosphere for audience and dancers alike.
Devised by Christopher Gable and Massimo Moricone in 1991, this moving adaptation returns now in spite of fire and floods taking turns to wreck costumes and set some years back, yet the only hint of singe or sogginess is in the colossal lightning and hailstorm at the end of Act I.
As, with slight tweaks, we move from bed-chamber to market place, ballroom, church or crypt, this action-packed story of family feuds and doomed romance is danced on a set of grey, Italian marble that, from the outset, heralds the tragedy to come: huge letters inscribed on the marble once proclaimed Amor Vincit Omnia (love conquers all) but already they’ve largely fallen away.
Abigail Prudames, a tender, scintillating Juliet, brings great nuance to her highly expressive dancing. At first, with the skittish speed and energy of a teenager in love, young Juliet spins, lithe and light, gigglingly giddy with joy, almost dancing on air both in solos and in pas de deux. The tender foldings and lifts that entwine her with tall, elegant Romeo, handsomely danced by Joseph Taylor, are most moving. But when joy turns to grief and despair, their morose expression and heavier gait reflect the mood, Juliet’s body becoming heavier still and entirely lethargic as she dances reluctantly with fiance Paris after being secretly wed to Romeo. Jackson Dwyer dances Paris as a very nice chap indeed who would likely have suited Juliet well had Romeo not shown up.
The busy ensemble embodies well the feuding of the two families. On the one side the haughty, noble Capulets in striking, formal livery of smart red, gold and black, and on the other the less formally, brightly clad Montagues (apart from smart Montague senior) who mingle and revel with the country folk. White blouse/shirts (or bare chest) with tights and dancing boots are more their style. A big hit as Mercutio is Harris Beattie: full of cheeky charm and energetic, impish capers, he dances with explosive nimbleness and agility, repeatedly tormenting the Nurse or dangerously taunting and provoking Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin. Harry Skoupas has great onstage presence, too, as Tybalt: dancing in black, studded leather, he exudes nothing but stern, high and mighty arrogance, disdain and brutish cruelty – plus a keenness for swords and daggers (until Romeo kills him).
Filippo di Vilio dances a fine Benvolio, including pleasing trios with Romeo and Mercutio, while Jonathan Hanks’ Lord Capulet is a soft, warm, loving father to Juliet, George Liang a gentle Friar Lawrence and Amber Lewis’s Lady Capulet retains a credibly colder, brittler, stiffer edge.
It’s Nurse to the rescue when it comes to comic relief, of course, and Heather Lehan earns loud applause and broad smiles both for her comical choreography and the warmth and likeability of her interactions. In scarlet, then black, this loving, caring, initially joyful being, like us all, is reduced to a heap of tearful grief by the tragic turns of events.
Admirably performed, magnificently moving.
Eileen Caiger Gray
