Section:GDN 1N PaGe:10 Edition Date:190812 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 11/8/2019 15:49 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Monday 12 Aug ust 2019
(^10) National
The setting
is some sort of
institution; the
inmates act out
their demons
through therapy
PHOTOGRAPH:
JOHAN PERSSON
Dance review
Youthful love portrayed with an
epic snog and a touch of Grease
Lyndsey Winship
K
issing till your lips are
red raw; a couple so
besotted they dance
connected at the
mouth, one long snog
as their bodies roll and
twist around the stage. Romeo and
Juliet is the story of a mad passion
and the OTT nature of youthful love- its naivety, insatiability, delusion.
That’s what Matthew Bourne sets
out to capture in this Shakespeare
shake-up, and he succeeds.
Bourne has cast young dancers,
some still in training, and worked
with a 22-year-old associate
choreographer, Arielle Smith. The
result is freshness and dynamism.
As ever, he tackles the classics on his
own terms, with clever twists and
hijacks of the plot ( plus a few holes).
Prokofi ev’s ballet music is still
fundamental, but it’s reorchestrated
by Terry Davies for a leaner sound.
The setting is some sort of
institution or asylum , a clinical
place of shiny white-tiled walls
and regimented fear. The inmates
dance in stifl ed order and act out
their demons in group therapy.
Rather than warring families, this
is a tale of young people pitched
against the system (brutal guards,
cold parents, oppressive rules).
It’s a Manichean view , but that’s
how it seems when you’re young.
It fi ts the sometimes comic-book
feel of Bourne’s world even if it can
potentially stop us from drilling
deep into the human core.Braithwaite ’s Juliet is potentially a
more complex character, subjected
to (off stage) abuse by one of the
guards (a menacing Dan Wright).
But hope comes for Juliet in
the form of Romeo. The moment
their eyes fi rst meet may be
underwhelming, lost amid so much
else happening on stage, but they
make up for it later in that epic snog.
Bourne captures how teenage love is
as much about the self as the other
person. In their pas de deux, the
couple make grand gestures to the
universe, rather than to each other.
The show is full of fertile ideas.
The staid school disco shifts to
full-on raunch when the adults leave
the room. Romeo and Juliet’s friends
huddle excitedly for a debrief the
morning after, like Grease’s Summer
Nights. And in the opening of act two
there’s a beautiful solo of supple,
subtle dancing from Jackson Fisch
(Balthasar, Mercutio’s boyfriend).
In Bourne’s work, the ensemble
can feel as if they are dancing on a
grid. Here, the injection of youth
and rhythmic blast, energy, guts and
emotion unsettles that. Then there’s
Juliet’s mad scene, not trapped in
her head but writ large on stage,
a climax with real dramatic clout,
helped by Prokofi ev ’s extra punch
and the huge commitment of the
young performers.U ntil 31 AugustMatthew Bourne’s
Romeo and Juliet
Sadler’s Wells, London
★★★★☆Romeo (Paris Fitzpatrick) arrives,
the awkward newbie, callow and
terrifi ed, to be aff ectionately
initiated by Mercutio – danced on
Saturday night by the charismatic
Ben Brown, brought in to cover
Reece Causton , who was injured
during Friday’s show. CordeliaYou’re the one that
I want: Braithwaite
and FitzpatrickRather than warring
families, this is a
tale of young people
pitched against
the system – brutal
guards, cold parents,
oppressive rulesРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS