Review: English National Ballet: Romeo and Juliet, Hippodrome

This English National Ballet production of the world’s most famous love story is also a spectacle driven by death at every turn.

The tone is set immediately by a huge, blood-red curtain billowing down onto the stage as a barrow overloaded with dead bodies emerges from the backstage gloom. Even as the feud begins to be played out between the Montagues (in pale green) and the Capulets (red), one constantly has a sense of foreboding that what first appears mere bawdy taunting between these two groups of overgrown ruffians could quickly turn to something more sinister, as of course it does.

The 1965 version by choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan established the ballet as an English classic for the Royal Ballet, but what we have here is the later interpretation by Rudolf Nureyev. He’d danced as Romeo, along with Margot Fonteyn as Juliet, in the MacMillan but in 1977 set his own mark on the piece to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and while he certainly includes some lovely solos for Juliet, one gets the impression that his version gives the male lead a special opportunity to shine.

Prokofiev’s sumptuously romantic music combines with beautifully designed costumes and stage sets to transport us to a piazza packed with market traders and street hawkers in Renaissance Verona. The ENB have a huge cast and – with the men wiggling their bottoms to provoke their rivals while the women from both families encourage them – they are clearly playing out a highly sexually charged mating ritual.

Even Juliet’s nurse gets a little action in Nureyev’s version. We first see her getting up to no good at the rear of the stage, and I don’t remember that happening in Shakespeare.

Aaron Robison as Romeo and Jurgita Dronina as Juliet are a charming couple. One senses that Juliet is surprised, and perhaps even a little frightened, by her own sexual awakening as the lovers become more and more physically and emotionally entwined. Nureyev’s choreography is consistently visceral and passionate.

Pics: Laurent Liotardo

Mercutio is danced by Pedro Lapetra and Fabian Reimair is Tybalt. Both are strong performers, but of course, inevitably doomed characters. Mercutio is more of a comic turn, his death scene so drawn out that it’s not taken seriously by his friends at first. They laugh at his antics, but Tybalt is always played as a more a more dangerous and determined killer.

Their deaths set the ultimate tragedy in motion and, whilst we all know where this story is going, the joy is to watch it unfold to some of the most beautiful music ever written. The standout and most recognisable theme in Romeo and Juliet is Prokofiev’s powerful ‘Dance of the Knights’. It’s nowadays more commonly known as the theme music from The Apprentice, but don’t let that put you off.

English National Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet continues at the Bristol Hippodrome until Saturday, November 25. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.atgtickets.com/shows/romeo-and-juliet/bristol-hippodrome