Northern Ballet's Romeo and Juliet Revisited

Standard YouTube Licence

Northern Ballet Romeo and Juliet Leeds Playhouse 20 Jun 2025 19:30

Few people, if any, understood Romeo and Juliet better than Christopher Gable.  He and Lynn Seymour had been selected by Kenneth MacMillan to premiere the title roles in MacMillan's new ballet.  They were replaced by Rudolph Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn only because the US impresario Sol Hurok thought that American audiences would flock to see Nureyev and Fonteyn in preference to Gable and Seymour. I saw both Nureyev and Fonteyn and Gable, and Seymour in the late 1960s or early 1970s. While I admired Nureyev and Fonteyn very much, I preferred Gable and Seymour in MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet.

Many years after the premiere of MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, Gable became the Artistic Director of the company now known as Northern Ballet.  He commissioned a new version of Romeo and Juliet for his company, choosing Massimo Moricone as his choreographer and Lez Brotherston OBE as his designer. Unlike the productions of Krzysztof Pastor and Sir Matthew Bourne, Gable's Romeo and Juliet follows Shakespeare pretty closely, though it has its own features.  Each act begins with a clap of thunder.  The second act ends with the fall of a beaded curtain representing a hailstorm.  Gangs of Capulets dance as cats making soft mewing sounds, while the Montagues present as birds. Mercutio's death throes are quite different in Gable's ballet from his agonies in MacMillan's, where he mistakes a sword for a musical instrument. Juliet witnesses the sword fight between Romeo and Tybalt in Gable's version.  I saw Gable's ballet in Sheffield on 4 Apr 2024 and reviewed it in Moriconi and Gable's Romeo and Juliet the next day

I watched Gable's Romeo and Juliet again at Leeds Playhouse on Friday, 20 Jun 2025.  One big difference between the performance that I saw in Sheffield last year and last Friday's is that the cast danced to Northern Sinfonietta last year, but to a recording by the Orchestra of the Slovak National Theatre on Friday.  I have to say that I liked the sound of the Slovak orchestra very much.  If a company has to dispense with live musicians, a recording of the Slovak National Theatre musicians was probably the next best choice.  But ballet is a three-way communication between dancers, musicians and audience.  Something is lost when a conductor and orchestra are absent.

    

Romeo was danced by Joseph Taylor on Friday.  He is currently the company's only premier dancer.  It goes without saying that he would have understood his role well.   He performed it with virtuosity and flair.  Juliet was Alessandra Bramante, who happens to be Italian.   She brought a freshness and energy to that role.   Mercutio was danced again by  Jun Ishi.   He first came to my attention in that role last year.   I was impressed with him then, and I remain impressed this year.   Harry Skoupas was a menacing Tybalt this year.  Last year he had been Paris.  Harriet Marden was a passionate Lady Capulet, 

At the reverence, several members of the audience rose to their feet.   I counted 20 dancers at the curtain call.   That's not a big cast, but they gave the impression of a big full-length production. 

A Christmas Carol - A Reflection of a Golden Age

John Leech Marley's Ghost

Source Wikimedia Commons

 Northern Ballet  A Christmas Carol Leeds Grand Theatre, 31 Dec 2024

Although I read in Dance and Dancers about a performance at the Royal Northern College of Music by a new company called Northern Dance Theatre when I was an undergraduate at St. Andrews, it was only in 1987 that I saw them for the first time.  I could not have had a better introduction because it was Gillian Lynne's A Simple Man with Christopher Gable as L S Lowry and Moira Shearer as the artist's mother.

They were two ballet heroes from my childhood.  Shearer had retired before I took an interest in ballet though clips and photos of her remained long afterwards.  Gable, on the other hand, was one of the biggest stars in the 1960s when I started to attend the ballet.  I saw him several times and admired him greatly.

At about the same time as I saw A Simple Man or perhaps shortly afterwards Gable was appointed Artistic Director of the company now known as Northern Ballet.  As I said in my review of Moriconi and Gable's Romeo and Juliet on 5 April 2024, "[s]ome of my favourite works were created while Gable was the Artistic Director of the company and I have always regarded that time as a golden age."  I added that it gave me great pleasure to see Romeo and Juliet again and that I very much looked forward to seeing A Christmas Carol again in November.

I actually saw it on the last day of the year and I was not disappointed.  We had an excellent cast:

• Jonathan Hanks was Scrooge
• Joseph Taylor was Young Scrooge
• Dominique Larose was Belle
• Harris Beattie was Bob Cratchit 
• Jun Ishii was Scrooge's nephew
• Sarah Chun was the nephew's wife
• Bruno Serraclara was Mr Fezziwig, and
• Amber Lewis was Mrs Dezziwig,

The rest of the cast and indeed the casts of the other performances in Leeds are here.   For those who do not know the ballet or even Dickens's novella, the role of each of those characters is introduced on the Christmas Carol Characters web page and the synopsis is on the Christmas Carol Story page,  There are some lovely videos and photos.   Lez Brotherston's designs were as fresh as ever as was Carl Davis's score.

I have waited a long time to see this show again.   The company danced to packed houses most nights in Leeds.   I hope it will keep its place in the repertoire.

Moriconi and Gable's Romeo and Juliet

Standard YouTube Licence

Northern Ballet Romeo and Juliet Sheffield Lyceum Theatre 4 April 2024 14:00

Northern Ballet has two fine productions of Romeo and Juliet in its repertoire.  One was created by Jean-Christophe Maillot which I reviewed in Northern Ballet's Romeo and Juliet - different but in a good way on 8 March 2015 and Romeo and Juliet after the Shrew on 15 Oct 2016.  The other was choreographed by Massimo Moricone and directed and devised by Christopher Gable.  Moricone and Gable's was premiered in 1992 to considerable critical acclaim but it had not been performed for many years.  It was revived in Leeds last month and is now on the second stage of a nationwide tour.  I watched the matinee performance of the ballet in Sheffield yesterday.

There are many different versions of Romeo and Juliet in the world's ballet companies Some like Lavrovsky's and MacMillan's follow Shakespeare quite closely.  Others like Pastor's and Sir Matthew Bourne's leave Shakespeare way behind.  Moricone and Gable's followed the play faithfully as can be seen from the "Romeo & Juliet Story" page on Northern Ballet's website but there were some original details that enhanced the understanding of the story.  In Juliet's bedroom, the nurse reminds Juliet that she is growing up by pointing to changes in her body.  In Act II Mercutio is provoked into challenging Tybalt because Tybalt drags a young woman by her hair.  I do not know whether those touches were suggested by the choreographer or director but Gable will have developed an intimate understanding of Romeo and Juliet from dancing the lead role with Lynn Seymour in MacMillan's work.  

Yesterday's cast included both premier dancers of the company as well as my first choices for the lead roles. When I had the opportunity to learn Juliet's dance at KNT's choreographic intensive in 2016, our teacher Jane Tucker, who had danced in  the same production of the ballet,  set the scene as follows:

"You are 12 years old. This is your first ball. You are so excited you can hardly contain yourself. All eyes are on you. You want everybody to be you."

I have seen many Juliets in my time including Fonteyn and Seymour and while they have dazzled me I have never been able to think of them as 12-year-olds.  Sarah Chun did remind me of that little girl bubbling with excitement and playfully teasing her nurse as she prepared for that first grown-up ball,  Similarly, Jonathan Hanks with his youthful features was ideally cast for Romeo.  In the play, those kids grow up almost overnight and so did Chun and Hanks in the ballet.  They are both remarkable dance actors.  I really warmed to them.  I see that in her bio Sarah Chun said that Juliet would be her dream role.  Yesterday, she lived that dream and she was brilliant.

An important role but one which is often discounted is the nurse or as we would describe her nowadays the nanny.  She appears in all three acts and she has to project all kinds of emotions from playfulness in the first bedroom scene and she romps around with her young charge to fear as she tries to protect Juliet from her grief-stricken and angry parents.   Her role was danced by Harriet Marden. She has been in the company for some time and I must have seen her countless times but this is the first time I have mentioned her in my reviews but I am sure it will not be the last. I shall now be looking out for her.  She showed considerable talent as a character dancer.  I loved the way she crossed herself before she grabbed Juliet's note from between the thighs of one of Romeo's buddies.

It was a treat to see Abigail Prudames, one of my favourite dancers in the company. I have watched her progress through the company's ranks with great satisfaction.  She danced Lady Capulet with exceptional energy and passion.  Her anger upon learning of Tybalt's death in his duel with Romeo was palpable.

Tybalt was danced by Joseph Taylor (another artist I have long admired) who portrayed his character perfectly.  Having met him in real life I know that he is anything but the privileged, headstrong, thuggish young blade who received his comeuppance after bullying young women and knifing Mercutio when he was off his guard but Taylor projected that character faultlessly,  He is a great dance-actor as well as a virtuoso.

One other artist who deserves special mention is Jun Ishi who danced Mercutio.   Again this is the first time that I have mentioned that artist in my reviews but it will not be the last as I shall follow his career with interest in the future.  The audience gasped with relief as he rose to his feet after the stabbing.  We relaxed as he took a swig from a bottle.  We despaired as he sank lifeless to the floor.

Everybody in the cast performed well and if I mentioned every member by name this review would resemble a telephone directory.  All I can do is to congratulate everyone in the show on a magnificent spectacle.

It was of course not just the dancers who made it a good show.  I have already mentioned Gable and Moricone but I should not forget John Longstaff  There were several details in the music which reinforced the story which I had not noticed in other productions.  I am not sure whether the peel of thunder immediately before the overture was part of the orchestration or Gable's direction.  I was a little discombobulated when I first heard it but it made perfect sense in the context of the hail storm at the end of Act II. 

I must also praise  Lez Brotherston's designs.   The opening scene featured a fragment of the maxim "Amor vincit omnia" which of course is the theme of the ballet.  Love did not quite conquer all from the point of view of the young lovers though maybe it did eventually in the embrace of Lords Capulet and Montague just before the curtain fell.   I learnt for the first time from the programme that many of the costumes from the original show had been destroyed or damaged in the flood.  I know that Peter Pan had been lost but I was not aware that Romeo and Juliet had also been affected.  It required a major effort to restore the ballet and it says a lot for a company that undertook that work.

I first got to know Northern Ballet Theatre when Christopher Gable danced with Moira Shearer in The Simple Man.  Some of my favourite works were created while Gable was the Artistic Director of the company and I have always regarded that time as a golden age,   It gives me great pleasure to see Romeo and Juliet again and I am very much looking forward to watching A Christmas Carol in November.

Wherefore Art Thou Romeo? Or Juliet for that Matter?

Richard Burbage, an Early Romeo

Author Unknown
Source Wikipedia Romeo and Juliet

New Adventures Romeo and Juliet The Lowry, 15 June 2019, 19:30

As I hate to dis a show in which a lot of resources have been invested and in which brilliant young artists have danced their hearts out, let's start with the positives. There was some dazzling dancing, particularly by Paris Fitzpatrick and Cordelia Braithwaite in the title roles and Daisy May Kemp as the Rev Bernadette Lawrence, the Verona Institute's chaplain. There was some very clever choreography for the inmates. I particularly liked the exercise in which the dancers did everything they could with a chair except sit on it. There were some brilliant designs by Lez Brotherston as always. It was a very slick and polished production that almost everyone in the audience rewarded with a standing ovation.

I was not one of them.  I remained firmly in my seat.  The show was good in many ways but not that good. Certainly not in comparison to some of the recent performances in that auditorium by Phoenix Dance Theatre, Birmingham Royal Ballet and Northern Ballet, Or, indeed, other works by Sir Matthew Bourne such as Red Shoes, Highland Fling and The Car Men. "What was wrong with it, exactly?" asked my friend who had spent the evening at the Bridgewater Hall listening to the BBC Philharmonic playing a new work by Mark Simpson as well as Mozart and Mahler.  I replied that it was shorn of just about everything that makes Shakespeare's play and almost every other version of the ballet so gripping.

It was set not in Verona, Italy, but in some gruesome psychiatric hospital called the Verona Institue,  There were no Montagues and Capulets or even Reds and Fascists as in Krzysztof Pastor's version, Just clipboard-wielding medics and brutal armed guards one of whom was called Tybalt,  Romeo was not a scion of one of the leading families but a disturbed young man who was ambushed by the inmates, debagged and clad in hospital whites as his loveless parents took their leave of him.  Juliet was also disturbed and apparently abused by Tybalt.  The couple met at an inmates' ball where most of the patients danced as woodenly as the dolls in Coppelia.  Romeo and Juliet's duets were different.  Their dances, particularly the last passionate one just before Juliet knifed herself, were the bits of the performance that I enjoyed the most.  There were no sword fights.  Just a shot from a drunken Tybalt and his strangling by the inmates for which Romeo allowed himself to take the rap. There was no grief-stricken Lady Capulet. No attempted forced marriage. No drug inducing a catatonic state. No final encounter with Paris. No suicide by knife or poison in the Capulet family tomb.

Now I am all for restaging a ballet in modern dress if it can be done well as Darius James and Amy Doughty did with Ballet Cymru's Romeo a Juliet, Ted Brandsen with Coppelia and indeed Sir Matthew with his re-imaginings of La Sylphide and Cinderella but change for change's sake as in Nixon's Swan Lake or Akram Khan's Giselle is pointless.  There is nothing wrong with creating a new work to a well-known score as Jean-Guy Saintus did with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or, indeed, as Milena Siderova did with the Dance of the Knights in her pillow dance for Bart Engelen. This was not so much a restaging of a gripping, complex work as a degutting.

Now I am a blogger, not a critic.  I keep this blog to remind me of shows that gave me joy.  If I can't say anything nice I say nothing at all.  If I really hated this work I would have kept it to myself.  There were things to admire which is why I started with the positives. It is just that I think Sir Matthew has done better and I have certainly seen better versions of Romeo and Juliet, not least Ballet Cymru's which is in Bracknell today. 

Don't let me put you off New Adventures's version.  Everyone else in The Lowry seemed to think it was outstanding. It is coming to Cardiff this week, London in August, Norwich, Birmingham, Canterbury and Southampton in September and Nottingham and Newcastle in October.  See it for yourselves and make your own minds up about it.  As I say, I am a  dance fan not a critic and my only qualification to cast an opinion is that I have seen an awful lot of dance in my 60 years or so of fairly regular theatre-going.

Huddersfield University's Graduate Costume Show

Standard YouTube Licence

University of Huddersfield  Graduate Costume Show 15 June 2018 17:00 Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield

I am often asked by friends who regard balletomania as an addiction how I came to be hooked. Even  though I saw a lot of theatre, attended a lot of concerts and visited a lot of art galleries and museums as I was growing up, I never had much to do with ballet.  That was largely because my father, a kindly and erudite man of letters, regarded it as slightly disreputable owing to its association with the Soviet Union and the tendency of the classical tutu and male dancers' tights to reveal more than many considered decent.

My interest in ballet was sparked by an exhibition of early 20th century Russian art at the Victoria and Albert Museum or possibly Royal Academy when I was about 16 or 17.  There I saw some of the work of Leon Bakst and was quite bowled over. I learned of his work with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. I found that he was just one of many great artists who had been commissioned to design for the ballet.  When I should have been revising for "A" levels and Oxbridge scholarships in Hammersmith Library I was pouring over its massive collection of reference books on theatre design and ballet.  I watched what I could on television and became an early fan of Peter Darrell's Western Theatre Ballet. Eventually the London Festival Ballet staged a triple bill at The Coliseum that included the The Firebird, widely regarded as Bakst's masterpiece.

On the pretext of treating an elderly aunt I persuaded my parents to pay for me to see the show. It was better than I had ever imagined. The music, the colour, the movement and the drama absorbed all my senses.  It was the most thrilling experience that I had ever known.  The auditorium exploded at the curtain call.  The cheering, whooping and growling from the crowd, the thunderous applause, the mountains of flowers were theatre in themselves. Nobody with any soul could fail to have been moved by that experience.  Although I had to wait till I got to St Andrews with an independent income before I could afford another show or ballet lessons my passion for dance had been ignited.

I experienced a similar frisson  of excitement last night when I saw another costume for The Firebird .  That garment had been designed by Amelia Sierevogel who has just graduated from the University of Huddersfield with a bachelor's degree in Costume with Textiles. The costume was modelled by Erin Phillips who also reads Costume with Textiles at Huddersfield.  As soon as she came on stage I recognized her as a fellow adult ballet student. Erin did not simply display that costume. She danced in it.  Much of her performance was on pointe.  It was - or rather costume and dancing were - spell binding.

Amelia's costume was just one of several excellent works that I saw last night at the Graduate Costume Show at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield.   The students on that course learn to design costumes for theatres around the world as can be seen from the placements.  Amelia's were with the Australian Ballet and the Australian Opera last year.  Students pick characters from theatre, literature, film or television and create costumes for them. Last night we saw costumes for Cinderella and Ophelia as well as The Firebird and many other characters.  There were several designs for the ballet. Erin was not the only model on pointe last night.  The show opened spectacularly with a scene from Midsummer Night's Dream with a splendid Bottom dressed as an ass.

Although last night's show was filmed, it is likely to be some time before any of it is posted to YouTube.  Happily one can get some idea of its format from the above recording of Rhianna Lister's designs for characters from A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from the 2016 show.

As I said above, I was led to ballet by Leon Bakst so I cannot stress too much the importance of theatre design. Over the years I have been impressed by other designers such as Nicholas Georgiadis, Osbert Lancaster and more recently Lez Brotherston   The course at Huddersfield is described in Costume with Textiles at the University of Huddersfield - Natalie Day. It is clearly an important resource for the theatre and thus for all of us.

Although it has nothing to do with costume design or fashion I must report another find.  On my way back to my car I passed an eatery called Rostyk Kitchen that advertised jollof rice. It is a delicacy from West Africa that my late spouse used to cook and I miss it so.  West African food requires a lot of preparation and the ingredients are not always readily available. I can cook simple dishes like plantains and sweet potatoes but not plasas, pepper chicken or groundnut stew. Now I no longer need to mither Vlad the Lad's mum and dad, my sisters in law in London or my relations by marriage in Freetown when I get a craving.  My feast of jollof rice and chicken completed a perfect day.

Newcastle Nutcracker

Standard YouTube Licence

Scottish Ballet  The Nutcracker  Theatre Royal Newcastle 2 Feb 2018

I have seen three versions of The Nutcracker over the last few months: the Royal Ballet's at the Royal Opera House, the Birmingham Royal Ballet's at the Hippodrome and Scottish Ballet's at the Theatre Royal Newcastle.  I just can't decide which I like best because each version has its own strengths. Scottish Ballet's are Peter Darrell's libretto and choreography, Lez Brotherston's designs and, of course, the company's brilliant dancers. 

In Darrell's version, Clara remains a little girl. She does not morph into Sugar Plum.  She gets rid of the vermin who stray into the second act by kissing rather than thumping them.  At the end of the ballet it is she and not Sugar Plum who invites the conductor onto the stage to take a bow.  I also like Scottish Ballet's divertissements.  The Chinese, for example, are not treated as acrobatic clowns despire the musical prompting.  They have a short but sweet dance for two female dancers.  The Arabian dance is a charming solo for one femalle. There is an English dance with a hornpipe that brought to mind  Balanchine's Union Jack and, to a lesser extent, Cranko's Pineapple Poll.

Brotherston's sets and costumes are magnificent. It cannot be easy to create a set for touring. The opening scene looked like a Christmas card.   It gave way to the Stahlbaums' Christmas party in a solid looking living room but the scene that impressed me most was the kingdom of the sweets with its hundreds of Christmas tree baubles.  As for the costumes I particularly liked the female mice.  Without a doubt Brotherston's vermin are the best in the business.  Nobody has better mouse heads.

Sugar Plum was danced by Bethany Kingsley-Garner. I became one of her fans when I saw her in Cinderella in 2015 (see Scottish Ballet's Cinderella 20 Dec 2015). I was impressed by her performance in Dawson's Swan Lake a few months later (see Empire Blance: Dawson's Swan Lake 4 June 2016). She delighted me yet again in The Nutcracker.  She was partnered well by Evan Loudon. Chrstopher Harrison was a splendid Drosselmeyer.  Marge Hendrick was a charming Snow Queen. As I have said before, it is the children who can make or break The Nutcracker and in this production the students definitely helped to make it.  Particularly Ailish Ogilvie who danced Clara and Charles O'Rourke her tiresome little brother.  Finally, it s always good to see Matthew Broadbent.   Tall and athletc he attracts attention. I was a fan when he was at Northern Ballet and even  more so now.

There were a few weaknesses. The orchestra sounded a little thin at times partcularly in the overture but that could have been the theatre's accoustics.  Newcastle's Theatre Royal is an archotectural gem and it is easy to reach by public transport but it is not the most comfortable venue. Scottish Ballet's Christmas show visits all the major venues in Scotland but rarely ventures into England and never south of Newcastle. That is a shame because audiences in the rest of the UK would love it.