ENB makes Nureyev’s drama soar
Romeo and Juliet ENB, Royal Festival Hall ★★★★★
In her Royal Ballet days, Tamara Rojo was a marvel of a Juliet. In fact, a March 2006 performance at Covent Garden that paired her Capulet with Carlos Acosta’s Montague remains perhaps the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen on a stage.
Now both director and star principal of English National Ballet, she is not currently slated to perform in ENB’S
Romeo – now back in London for the first time since 2011 – but this turns out to be less regrettable than it might at first seem. For, to judge by Tuesday night’s show, she appears to have passed her Method-like feeling for this tragedy on to the entire company.
Although it tells exactly the same story, to (give or take) the same music, this is, however, a very different production from the Royal Ballet’s. This isn’t the 1965 version by Kenneth Macmillan, but the 1977 creation, choreographed by Rudolf Nureyev for himself and London Festival Ballet (as ENB was then). For sheer grandeur of spectacle, and erotic intensity, it is no match for Macmillan’s – but it remains a handsome and valid alternative.
There’s a stronger sense here of the couple caught up in a gigantic socio-political machine, with Tybalt as ubiquitous as the KGB – how not to see this in the light of Nureyev’s dramatic defection to the West in 1961. Other novelties – for those used to the Macmillan version – include a character-defining solo for Romeo in Act I, two late scenes in and on the road to Mantua, and plenty of deft theatrical and comic flourishes. I’m not sure much is added by the quartet of fates-cum-furies who occasionally assemble, but they are a minor distraction, especially in a first-night performance as strong as Tuesday’s.
This was one of those rare evenings where there wasn’t a single weak link across the entire troupe, or indeed in the pit. Most prominently among a super supporting cast, James Streeter (as Tybalt) and Fernando Bufalà (Mercutio) were identically excellent, both dancing with terrific attack, speaking through the steps with complete clarity and mining every last ounce of their characters’ chalk-andcheese dramatic potential. They also handled their respective death scenes with aplomb – always hard to carry off, in any Romeo, Act II was as skinpricklingly exciting as it was tragic.
At the centre of the evening were Isaac Hernández and Erina Takahashi’s very comely star-cross’d couple. Although not equipped with a particularly lofty jump, he is a meticulous, sensitive and charismatic performer, bringing refinement and boyish enthusiasm to that Act I solo (especially the complex footwork), and making his Romeo a rounded, credible and endearing character.
Takahashi, meanwhile, danced beautifully and acted her heart out, sending Juliet on an expertly delineated journey. She put the special buoyancy of her movement to perfectly girlish use early on, seemed utterly destroyed during the Act III family scenes, and was fearlessly unguarded in her clinches with Hernández. He returned this warmth, and their chemistry blazed.
So, a 40-year-old, second-tier retelling of a 400-year-old story? Absolutely – but also entertainment as vital, as alive and as stirring as can be.
In London until Saturday, then in Bristol in the autumn. Tickets: ballet.org.uk