I fear it was one of those occasions when I simply didn't get what other people were reacting to. My heart vaguely sank when I saw that it was set in the Verona Institute with a standing set of white bricks and metal mesh side walls. However the first loud sigh started when the show did!
Prokofiev's score has been cut to suit Bourne's cloth and it launched straight into the score's greatest hit 'Montagues and Capulets' aka 'Dance Of The Knights' aka 'The Apprentice UK's Theme Music', the first of quite a few appearances during the ballet - it's like doing a version of THE NUTCRACKER with 'The Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy' every 15 minutes.
My main gripe was Bourne's clunking premise which, for me, simply refused to fly. Romeo is admitted to the Bourne Home For The Perpetually Leaping Confused by his careerist politician parents and left to mingle with the usual Bourne misfit inmates including the flashy Mercutio and his gay lover Balthasar and the sadistic guard Tybalt who terrorizes the inmates.
At a scene - shall we say borrowed? - straight out of WEST SIDE STORY, during a party for the inmates - cue lots of gauche acting and stiff-legged two and fro dancing - the mirror ball starts and Romeo and Juliet spy each other across the room - cue the ensemble start to dance in slow motion while our couple instantly fall in love.
Juliet is a twitchy inmate that we find already prowling the walls and always on guard from the nasty advances of Tybalt. After the party, Tybalt murders Mercutio and the inmates turn on him, all having a hand in his death... and that's only the first half! And that's the problem... Surely the pivot for any adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is that the two lovers are separated by blood and circumstance, both interior and exterior obstacles, that result in the fatal outcome... but here, where do the obstacles lie?
Tybalt is dispatched in the first act so no hindrance there... the Asylum staff hardly seem to care about them; Romeo's parents could care less about them - they are just happy to have their son off their hands... which leaves... what, their madness? If there is nothing keeping them apart then what do you have left? You are left with Bourne's scenario which culminates in an out-of-nowhere accident. Hardly the stuff to inspire 423 years of fascination.
Bourne's choreography was remarkable but not consistently - there seemed to be certain moments which seemed to be retreads from other shows - most noticeably in the party scene where the ensemble did his usual 'embarrased dancer shtick' and in the second-act opener for grieving Balthasar which was an all-too familiar copy of Angelo's jail solo in THE CAR MAN. The wimpy, whey-faced Romeo of Paris Fitzpatrick struck me again as being based on Bourne's character of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS but thank the lord for the magnetism of Cordelia Braithwaite as Juliet.
As she demonstrated most notably in THE RED SHOES, she is a dancer of exquisite emotion and like in that ballet, here she demonstrated deep wells of maniacal energy that made her incredibly watchable. To be honest no one else came close although Jackson Fisch went all out for pathos in his Balthasar solo. The ensemble were all exceptional and gave committed performances.
Lez Brotherston's set was little more than functional but Paule Constable's lighting gave the show the light and shade not always found in the scenario or choreography.
The ultimate problem for me is that Kenneth McMillan's Royal Ballet version is so unforgettably powerful that even Bourne's anti-romantic take on the score here for me failed because you simply don't care about anyone on stage - and if you don't care what happens to your pair of star-crossed lovers in whatever adaptation you are seeing then what's the point?
Being a Bourne show there will be a tour, a cinema screening at some point and a probable dvd release so I am guessing I will have an opportunity so give it another look.
I suppose...
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