Northern Ballet: Romeo & Juliet review

Christopher Gable’s take on Shakespeare’s star cross’d lovers, devised with the choreographer Massimo Moricone in 1991, is thrillingly savage. Drawing on his experience of the mighty Royal Ballet version (Kenneth MacMillan made his Romeo on Gable), and his stint as an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, its no-holds-barred approach hurtles you through the evening.

The animosity between the Montague and Capulet houses – here given bird and cat motifs – crackles as the opening, full-scale brawl erupts. The fighting is rough and raucous, with a real sense of jeopardy. The Capulet ball is menacingly martial, with knights in black leather and their ladies swooping across the floor in a show of dominance. Tybalt is a barely contained ball of fury, unleashing violence on men and women alike. Lady Capulet, on finding Tybalt dead, turns into a wild-haired screaming banshee. Even sweet Juliet, when we first meet her, is giving her Nurse a hard time by repeatedly shoving her over and pulling her skirt up. Later, Juliet’s treatment at her father’s hands is bone-chilling.

Interspersed among this brutality, we have meltingly lyrical moments for the young lovers. Spotting each other across the ballroom floor, Romeo and Juliet are frozen as the dance whirls around them – then the rest of the stage is freeze-framed as they have their first, astonished, swooning encounter. Their balcony pas de deux is a heady rush, their parting duet a languid luxuriating in their relationship’s consummation. True, making all the emotions so loud may leave fewer gaps for subtlety, but it certainly electrifies a story that we have seen a thousand times.

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