Brisbane Reviews

This production, now showing at the Lyric Theatre at Brisbane’s QPAC, is, in the words of Queensland Ballet’s artistic director Ivan Gil-Ortega, “... a revival of one of the greatest ballet masterpieces, Kenneth Macmillan’s Romeo and Juliet”. And a masterpiece it is indeed. The choreography, especially of the opening scene in the marketplace in Verona, is breathtakingly impressive. Groups of Italian market goers – noblemen and women, peasants, sex workers, and of course Capulets and Montagues – whirl seamlessly in and out of the crowds, mirroring the kaleidoscopic energy of Prokofiev’s music perfectly. And when the fight erupts, the swordsmanship is so precise that each click of swords – and there must be 20 swordsmen fighting – occurred on the beat.

Both costumes and sets immerse the audience in 15th century Italy. The sets are modelled on the houses and arcades in Verona which still maintain their medieval origins, including Juliet’s famous, imagined, balcony. For the market-place scenes the arcades were full of townspeople chatting and strolling, and the upper part of the stage was festooned with the flags of the different quarters of the city. The division of Italian cities into quarters, or contrade, still exists today in the city of Siena, where the rivalry between the citizens of each contrada bursts into play in the annual palio, a horse-race round the city’s scallop-shaped square. Siena also gave the set and costume designer Paul Andrews the inspiration for the proscenium curtain, which is a detail from the famous fresco about good and bad government from the Siena palazzo ducale, The costumes are based on specific paintings by, among others, Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca, and are absolutely beautiful.

This detailed, careful, and stunningly lovely focus on the Italian setting of Shakespeare’s play is at times, however, slightly at odds with Prokofiev’s very Russian music. The men in Prokofiev’s score are more brutal, and Juliet more pure and innocent, than I would expect to find, either in Elena Ferrante’s Italy today, or in Bocaccio’s Italy in medieval times. These extremes were faithfully depicted in the transparent reading of the score by conductor Nigel Gaynor, and played unflinchingly (though not without blemish in the devilishly high brass parts) by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

I am not an aficionado of ballet, and to me some things about the ballet world are strange. Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is, apart from the early Stravinsky ballets, the only ballet I would not willingly live without. This is because, unlike all 19th century ballets, it is possible to choreograph it with utter fidelity, not only to the music, but also to the story. And the score is gorgeous, one tune hot on the heels of another, and each associated with a character or a situation. But why is this show described as Kenneth Macmillan’s Romeo and Juliet rather than Prokofiev’s? And, more perplexingly, why don’t prima ballerinas get the same star treatment as prima donnas in opera? The printed program for this show didn’t even say who were the dancers who portrayed Juliet and Romeo. Are we just supposed to know? Indeed, the program told me very little of what I wanted to know about the preparation of the performance.

Chiara Gonzalez’s performance as Juliet is utterly wonderful. She expressed in her body every shade of the transition from an innocent, virginal girl to a woman completely taken over by desire. Her work on points, sometimes gliding on them so that she seemed to float, expressed emotions from amazement to horror (as when her parents insist that she marry Paris). There was not a moment when her repertoire of ballet movements and gestures hinted at cliche. When, in the two sublime pas de deux, she was carried shoulder high by Patricio Reve as Romeo, it was a visual metaphor for, or better, an embodiment of, her ecstatic love for him. I became familiar with Prokofiev’s ballet through the film with Rudolph Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn as the principals, and Gonzalez was every bit as electrifying as Fonteyn.

The dancing of the other principals, and indeed of the entire corps de ballet, supported her admirably. Special mention should be made of the dancer who played Mercutio (Kohei Iwamoto), who, true to his Shakespearean prototype, was comic even in death. I very much liked the moments when the choreography borrowed from disciplines outside classical ballet, such as mime and physical theatre. This made me overlook some of the undeniable cliches of the ballet world, although I did get a little tired of the men’s star-jumping.

Myself not being in the swim of ballet, I was surprised even by the audience. They loved the performance, clapping, like Italian opera-goers, after every particularly spectacular number, and gave it a standing ovation at the curtain-call. But they talked over the music during the scene changes when nothing was happening on the stage. And this was not at all disrespectful, in fact it was clearly normal behaviour. It was a tangible demonstration that what they were attending was Kenneth Macmillan’s show. For me, however, this masterpiece of ballet was Prokofiev’s.

Both musically and choreographically, this show is a high point of ballet, and should not be missed.

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