Dance: Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet
Sadler’s Wells, London, until 31 August; then touring until 12 October (new-adventures.net) Running time: 2hrs
The story of Romeo and Juliet is famously that of a “mad passion” between teenagers, and the “naivety, enormity, insatiability, delusion” of young love, said Lyndsey Winship in The Observer. But rarely can this crazed spirit have been captured so brilliantly, and so intensely, as the great English choreographer Matthew Bourne does in this new piece of dance theatre set to a reworked version of the familiar Prokofiev score.
This is a couple “so besotted that they dance connected at the mouth, one long snog as their bodies roll and twist across the stage”. From beginning to end, the “visceral” storytelling is “ferociously” on the side of youth, said Sarah Crompton in The Guardian – and the work is “stunningly danced” by a young cast led by Cordelia Braithwaite as a “radiant” Juliet, and Paris Fitzpatrick as a “dreamy, innocent” Romeo. “Full of insight and invention, this is a thrilling rethinking of this tale of woe.”
Bourne’s big idea is to place the action in a kind of reform school (the “Verona Institute”) for wayward youth, said Debra Craine in The Times. There are no Montagues, Capulets or rival gangs. Instead, there’s “bullying and group therapy, raging teenage hormones” and violent youthful frustration. “It’s strong stuff, strongly delivered.” Youthfulness is crucial to the power of this “brilliantly inventive” show, said Mark Monahan in The Daily Telegraph: at each town visited by the production, the already youthful cast is joined by six local performers, aged 16 to 19. All this results in a production of “astonishing, explosive, hormonal energy that blazes across the stage”, and one of the “smartest, sexiest, most stirring shows” that Bourne has ever created. “Is there any higher praise than that?”
If I have a quibble, said David Jays in The Sunday Times, it’s that the third act doesn’t maintain the preceding momentum. Following Tybalt’s death, the action becomes fussy with detail and it feels wrong that this “doggedly resilient” Juliet should enact a mad scene “right out of 19th century opera”. But overall this is “delivered with unceasing vim” and flair.