If you love ballet, and Matthew Bourne’s choreographically complex interpretations, then you will love this as one of the most ambitious, but if you love Shakespeare, and are looking for a classical retelling of a famous text, you won’t find it here. Forewarned is forearmed, and therefore expect nothing and be gifted everything.
This production of Romeo and Juliet begs the question when does poetic licence expire and become original creativity?
Bourne’s ballet company, New Adventures, is made up of the most formidable dancers with the ability to display emotion so raw that the inconsistencies of the story can be set aside for two hours of immersion, not in a love story that you know, but one you purposefully do not.
The production remains full of uninhibited, youthful romance, with the neglected Romeo, dumped by high powered, politically ambitious parents, displaying emotion so captivating you at once feel drawn to this modern representation of an angsty teenager, head over heels in love.
Set in the ‘Verona institute’, a psychiatric asylum, come hospital, come prison, the sparring Montagues and Capulets inherent to the story are all but removed, replaced simply by male / female segregation. The youthful company renders any mental casting from the audience virtually impossible, with Romeo’s absence until halfway through the first half thoroughly setting the scene for this modern retelling.
Similarly, upon his arrival, there is the notable lack of the tales iconic struggle, the divisions and objections that their love has to overcome, as, from the first few moments, they become a ‘couple’ to no obvious objection. This is displayed beautifully in their ‘cell duet’ that boasts the longest ever continuous kiss in dance history.
Transferring the complexities of a Shakespeare text into unspoken ballet is a task in itself, but radically adapting the well-known story, so much so that it may as well have been a love story between Roger and Joanna, renders the production not at all what one expects. This said, in the knowledge that it is not Romeo and Juliet as you know it, the artistic jump from drama to ballet is magnificently captured, and beautifully retold, by Bourne.
Without letting slip the most courageous of the many ‘re-imaginings’, reject all classic plot points that may feel are key to the story. What you will find is strikingly new and courageously different ballet, while retaining the powerful tale of heartbreak.
Romeo and Juliet has become all too familiar in its performance over the last 400 years, so, accompanied by the genius of Prokofiev’s score guiding our emotions through this new interpretation, Matthew Bourne has crafted a new tale of love and loss.
It is not one you know, nor one you expect, but it is certainly one you will remember.
Festival Theatre, September 19th – 23rd
Image provided by Capital Theatres via Press Release, Credit: Johan Persson