Elena Lobsanova and Guillaume Côtéin Romeo and Juliet. Photo by Bruce Zinger (edited for Blue Riband)
The National Ballet of Canada presented Romeo & Juliet on March 11, 2020. Production cancelled until further notice.
Cast
Juliet - Elena Lobsanova
Romeo - Guillaume Côté
Mercutio - Jack Bertinshaw
Tybalt - Piotr Stanczyk
Choreography - Alexei Ratmansky
Costume design - Richard Hudson
Lighting design - Jennifer Tipton
Soul Tonic: An Enlivening Romeo and Juliet Returns to The National Ballet of Canada
The raspberry-pink and indigo brocade-print curtain rises, giving way to a Mediterranean sorbet sunset. The sky is slashed in half by a palace silhouette. Over its shadowy wound-like tower, a bouquet of corps dancers unfurl onto the landscape in satiny swaths of dusty rose, mauve, and muted teal peppered with pops of the juiciest electric pink. It becomes immediately clear that Alexei Ratmansky’s Romeo and Juliet revival is going to be a delicious production—one to really bite into and savour.
Guillaume Côté and Elena Lobsanova in Romeo and Juliet. Photo by Aleksandar Antonijevic (edited for Blue Riband)
With quick, almost-illusory footwork punctuated by lunging full-body sways as geometric as they are frenetic, the citizens of Verona set the scene for a riveting and entirely up-to-date ode to Elizabethan drama. It is a layered choreographic tapestry revealing the social motivations behind hostility and passion; combat and clowning; tenderness and malice. These are emotional threads we might prefer to leave aside our peaceful lives in the imagined dark days of “mutiny” and “plague”, but would be well-advised to remember permeate the world even now.
Ratmansky’s merit as a visual storyteller for the contemporary spectator cannot be understated. From the first scene onward, he devotes special moments to each dancer onstage, giving us glimpses of their individuality, if we care to look attentively enough. With a flick of the wrist and a turn of the head, each character’s body language contributes phrasing to parse out and bring forward the most exquisite nuances of Prokofiev’s score and of Shakespeare’s poetry. Somehow, the choreography (commissioned especially by Karen Kain for The National Ballet of Canada in 2011), the music (USSR, 1938), and the text (England, 1595) all speak the same language.
At first, everything about this Romeo and Juliet feels like stepping right into an Italian Renaissance fresco. From the bubbling burgundy headpieces to the crispy-brown prop poultry, Richard Hudson’s design is clearly well-researched, like a museum display come to life. Art historians rejoice! That said, the dramatic impact of cheeky comic pantomime weaving in and out of the music’s stormy, sobering overtones seems like it would be entirely misplaced amid such matter-of-fact scenery. And yet, it isn’t. Instead, the choreography makes simple use of the aspects of set, costume, lighting, and melody to emphasize not only the serious technical virtuosity of the soloist dancers but also their ability to pull off some charming, soapy acting.
Elena Lobsanova and Guillaume Côté in Romeo and Juliet. Photo by Bruce Zinger. (edited for Blue Riband)
We witness a bilious Tybalt (Piotr Stanczyk); a tender Benvolio (Skylar Campbell); a hilarious Mercutio (Jack Bertinshaw); an adorable, waddling Nurse (Lorna Geddes); and a flawlessly ethereal Juliet (Elena Lobsanova). Guillaume Côté’s Romeo is heartbreakingly endearing. Each soloist embodies their personality to the core. The cast’s chemistry is undeniable, and their total trust in each other palpable from metres away. From the bedroom to the ballroom scenes, their grand jetés and high lifts blend together not as if they are performing the plot, but truly living it.
With a partnering this persuasive, even the narrative becomes secondary to the psychological weight of the relationships unfolding on stage. The cast takes turns with all kinds of risks from small quirks (such as Romeo’s toss of some token up onto Juliet’s balcony, where it swiftly lands in her hand) to shocking convulsions (Mercutio’s moment of death with Bertinshaw toppling to the ground like a stiff corpse and Romeo plummeting after him to weep, kneecaps-first). Côté, especially, transports us into his portrayal so entirely that we forget it is fictional, by completing every move of his body from kiss to sword thrust as if it’s both his first and his last time experiencing it.
Guillaume Côté and Elena Lobsanova in Romeo and Juliet. Photo by Bruce Zinger (edited for Blue Riband)
In Act III, the demanding emotionality of the melodrama pans out all the way. With the set stripped down significantly to only barely suggest the abbeys and catacombs of Medieval Europe, the already-engrossing choreography takes over. Where there was formerly seduction, there is now climax. As Juliet acquires her poison from Friar Lawrence (Peter Ottmann) and sets the tragedy we know all too well into motion, Lobsanova’s breathtaking lines, with perfectly measured overextension, take us all the way to Juliet’s last breath without missing a beat – even the moment of her collapse a beautifully executed wobble. Côté is right there to support her, centre stage, his eerily unmoving frame serving as her cozy, dependable final resting spot. An elderly woman in front of me wiped away a tear, shaking her head softly in disarmament.
This Romeo and Juliet places narrative emphases in all the right moments, without overamplifying them. It has just the right amount of grotesquerie to offset the romantic—Benvolio’s single blood-red shirt sleeve and one harlequin’s kooky devil mask, to name two instances. It indicates each plot obstacle and resolution clearly, with speed and precision. It is faithful to its theatrical past. It is responsive to its political present. It wastes no time or space. How is it possible to communicate a story so seamlessly through gesture? Though Alexei Ratmansky may be the one to hold the recipe, it may be very difficult to describe in words. This story simply has to be seen to be swallowed.
Author Bio: Anna Paliy is a doctoral candidate in the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research explores the history of ballet costume between the years 1890-1930, with a focus on the storytelling potential of theatrical textile design. Her writing has been published in the journals Kino and Semicolon (University of Western Ontario) and Transverse (University of Toronto), and most recently in the magazines The Dance Current and The WholeNote. Formerly a competitive rhythmic gymnast, Anna now enjoys practicing circus acrobatics and painting in her spare time.
Website: https://ampart.wixsite.com/research
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