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.

Motoring

Oldsmobile sedan from the 1950s

Author Sigmund

Source Wikipedia

Matthew Bourne's The Car Man Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, 24 June 2015

Matthew Bourne has never been quite my cup of tea but that does not stop my recognizing quality when I see it. Last night at the Sheffield Lyceum we had quality in spades. Quality in Lez Brotherson's designs. Quality in Terry Davies's score which incorporates Bizet and builds on it. Quality in the dancing including an impressive first performance by Tim Hodges in the role of Luca. Above all, quality in choreography by Matthew Bourne. The Car Man is the best production by New Adventures that I have seen to date.

Although it is described on the cover of the programme as "Bizet's Carmen re-imagined" it is actually a very ingenious and original work. It is set not outside a cigarette factory in 19th century Seville but in small town America of the 1950s. This was a time when women wore full skirted dresses of bright fabrics and elaborate hair styles that billowed in the dance. It was a time when Oldsmobiles and Studebakers were as capacious and majestic as ocean liners.

There is no Carmen in The Car Man but there is Luca. He seduces Angelo (Liam Mower) who is the nearest we get to Don Jose. He is a slightly built, bookish, inoffensive and slightly effeminate youth who works for Dino (Alan Vincent) in his garage. Dino employs most of the young men in the cast as mechanics and his wife Lana (Ashley Shaw) and his sister in law, Rita (Katy Lowenhoff) in his bar. The mechanics rag Angelo mercilessly. Only Luca takes his part teaching him how to use his fists as well as making advances towards him. However, Luca proves a false friend. He gets into a fight with Dino after making love to Lana. He wounds Dino fatally leaving Angelo to take the blame. Angelo is arrested and attacked in custody by a warder (Dan Wright). No doubt having been toughened by his imprisonment Angelo overpowers his attacker and escapes from prison with the warder's pistol seeking revenge. The nearest we get to Michaela in The Car Man is sister Rita who sees the crime from the start and tries to right the injustice to Angelo.

Well it's a good, tight, robust story that works and if anyone in Leeds who attended last Saturday's narrative dance perambulation (see My Thoughts on Saturday Afternoon's Panel Discussion at Northern Ballet 21 June 2015) remains in doubt as to what is meant by narrative dance he or she need only take the motorway to Sheffield. This is not ballet as such but it is dance that takes place in a theatre which for most theatre goers is all that matters. It is dramatic. It is exciting. It is spectacular. It is fun.

This company has devoted followers who leapt to their feet and practically whooped the house down at the final curtain call. That never happens in ballet but it is no bad thing as it introduces new audiences to dance in a way that no amount of midscale tours and live screenings from London or Moscow will achieve in a month of Sundays. As I said in the first paragraph this genre is not exactly my cup of tea (and despire an impressive performance it still isn't) but that does not stop me from appreciating it.

Other Reviews

Roslyn Sulcas  Review: Suspense and Charisma in ‘The Car Man’ in London  23 July 2015

Bourne's "Lord of the Flies" at Bradford: good though not quite my cup of tea

William Golding

Photo Wikipedia

New Adventures' Lord of the Flies closed in Bradford to a standing ovation  though it has to be said in an auditorium that was a good deal less than full. I was one of the few members of the audience who did not stand up on Saturday evening. Neither did I cheer. But I did clap. For although the show was not quite my cup of tea it was good.

Based closely on the novel by William Golding about a group of schoolboys on a desert island who descend into savagery when left to their own devices. it was far from comfortable to watch. The cast was of course all male and many of the dancers had been recruited from local schools. An on-line form on New Adventures ' website explains:

"Lord of the Flies is a unique project that will bring together professional dancers from our company and young male dancers from the regions in which we will present the production. Over the coming months each regional venue will be launching large-scale community outreach programmes to find the young men to be in the show. We are interested to hear from young men aged between 10 - 25 year old. No previous experience of dance is necessary. "

The main characters were Ralph, Piggy and Jack danced respectively by Sam Archer, Sam Plant and Danny Reubens of New Adventures. They all performed well and I think I would have liked to have seen more of those principals had the story and choreography permitted.

The score by Terry Davies fitted the story very well. There was a lot of percussion and rhythm. The choreography which had to be within the capability of schoolboys with no previous experience of dance while allowing the principals to shine was devised cleverly by Scott Ambler. Lez Bretherson made ingenious use of hampers and clothes rails as props.

The show was dramatic, well produced and well danced. For the children who took part it must have been a wonderful experience. Nureyev, Acosta, Polunin and indeed Bourne himself had already eroded much of the the prejudice against dance for boys. Shows like this bury it for ever and for that alone it deserves to be commended.