In most traditional productions of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet’s transition from nursery to marriage market is signalled by the sweetly demure gesture with which she acknowledges the existence of her newly pubescent breasts. In Jean-Christophe Maillot’s, that moment is choreographed in far more blatant terms. Maillot’s Juliet is clearly ripe and ready for independence – and signals the fact to her shocked nurse by laughingly ripping down the top of her dress.
This is a production that’s all about re-minting, re-energising the Shakespeare-Prokofiev classic. Ernest Pignon-Ernest’s set is a clean, white abstraction of ramps and screens; Jerome Kaplan’s costumes are more Issey Mikaye than Renaissance; and to a slightly perverse degree there’s barely a prop on stage – no market stalls, no palace trumpery and no swords in the street-fighting scenes.
Instead we’re given a production that’s carried entirely through dance. Much of Maillot’s inventive, edged and energetically sprung choreography justifies this treatment. And Northern Ballet, who are the first UK company to perform the work, rise superbly to its challenges. The men, in particular, have never looked better and Giuliano Contadini and Martha Leebolt are exceptionally fresh, believable lovers.
But there are problems with Maillot’s treatment. He’s framed the entire ballet through the retrospective eyes of a guilt-wracked Friar Lawrence, and the device does little for the story. The Friar is often an intrusively melodramatic presence, against which other elements in the plot – Tybalt’s death, Juliet’s dilemma over the sleeping potion – are disproportionately underplayed.
Most problematic are the issues Maillot creates for himself by eschewing traditional props. The final tragedy turns inadvertently comic as, lacking dagger or poison, Romeo is forced to dash himself to death against the tomb and Juliet has to strangle herself with a symbolic scarf of blood.
- Until 12 March. Box office: 0844 848 2700. Venue: Grand theatre, Leeds.
