Romeo & Juliet (Moscow City Ballet) – Theatre Royal, Brighton

Artistic Director : Smirnov-Golovanov

Principal Ballet Mistress : Ludmila Nerubashenko

Music: Sergei Prokofiev

Reviewer: David Griffiths

The Public Reviews Rating:

Moscow City Ballet was accompanied by the Moscow Ballet Orchestra, giving the audience an evening of vibrant colour and excitement together with a number of amusing moments.

The ballet was performed in three acts, perhaps starting off a little slowly, but just getting better and better, thus holding the audience’s full attention.

Despite the fact that the stage was probably somewhat smaller than many that the company will have performed on, (the stage in St Petersburg was at least twice the size), this did not in any way detract from the performance, which was entirely spectacular, fast moving and thoroughly enjoyable.

There were many individual performances of incredible delicacy and precision and the entertaining duet from Romeo & Juliet at the end of Act 1 clearly portrays the joys and thrills of first love!

Possibly the energetic duels to the death in Act 11 may have been a little protracted, but this did nothing to really detract from the enjoyment of the evening. Sadly the killing of Tybalt (Juliet’s cousin) by Romeo to avenge the death of his friend Mercutio, results in Romeo being banished from the Kingdom by the Prince of Verona, before Romeo and Juliet are able to declare their secret marriage earlier that day by the Friar, who marries them in the hope that this will bring peace to the two warring families.

Act iii has again wonderful performances by the lovers trying to forget the terrible events of the day knowing that they will need to part before day break. When Paris arrives with a wedding gown for Juliet, the ballet expresses clearly her refusal to marry him, which leads her parents to threaten to abandon her. Her onlyescape from this dilemma is death, she speaks to the Friar who gives her a potion which will send her into a deep sleep. He promises to let Romeo know what is happening.

In true Shakespearian fashion this does not happen, and we all know how the story ends, but the truly breath taking way this is expressed in dance left the audience spellbound, and their reluctance to let the dancers leave the stage at the end of the performance was the proof that this was a truly spellbinding production.

Romeo & Juliet (Moscow City Ballet) - Theatre Royal, Brighton, 1.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating