by Leigh Witchel
If you wish life, and ballet, were simpler, you’d be forgiven for wishing that “Romeo and Juliet” were only Romeo and Juliet. Townspeople, beggars, merchants, harlots . . . they’re in American Ballet Theatre’s staging of Kenneth MacMillan’s perennial production by the yard and for the duration. Yet though the street scenes aren’t essential for the dancing, they are essential to the story. In MacMillan’s and Prokofiev’s treatments of the story, they create the matrix of a state divided against itself, where the conflict supplants its causes to become a tribal identity.
Thomas Skelton’s lighting at the ballet’s opening places us before dawn. How strange was it that Rosaline, played by Katherine Williams, dressed in elegant attire without any cloak or outer garment, was walking alone in Verona? Romeo was waiting in the street hoping to encounter her; there was even a small suspicion that she felt threatened. She looked at him, snapped her fingers and a Capulet appeared to escort her.
Even with that undertone, Aran Bell started out, as most Romeos do, lighthearted. The first trio for Romeo, Benvolio and Mercutio is both a set dance and background of who and where they are; a sketch of living in a violent era. The three humorously mimed dueling and death. It’s a game of bravado; death as a dance.
Tybalt, Thomas Forster, started off the initial brawl by trying to grab one of the harlots. Given the sense of threat and insult to Rosaline, it would have been interesting if that provocation had been linked to why he arrived. The fight, as pointless as any tribal battle among fellow citizens, escalated to where the heads of the Montague and Capulet households were fighting with broadswords at the front.
Escalus, played by Clinton Luckett, demanded the men put down their swords and forced a reconciliation that amounted to nothing. It was a portrait of a just but ineffectual ruler.
The situation was worse than anyone was willing to admit, not only onstage. Prokofiev wrote the score in 1935, a grim time in Russia and Europe, when fascism was gripping Europe and Hitler was about to rewrite its map. Stalin’s policies only a few years prior forced famine on millions in the Ukraine, where Prokofiev was born. From a career principally as a pianist in the West, Prokofiev had returned, homesick, to the Soviet Union during the time he was writing the ballet. The commission, first offered by the Kirov Ballet, then moved to the Bolshoi because of political infighting, was part of his path home.
On the street, Escalus motioned for the brawlers to step aside to reveal the men killed. Prokofiev wrote four low notes that gradually unleash a final dissonant cry: a descent into calamity. The conflict itself seems like a character with a destiny of its own.
As Juliet, Devon Teuscher has a tall, leggy frame reminiscent of a ballerina of the prior generation: Julie Kent. Teuscher’s not a Makarova-style waif, so her Juliet was less waif-like and more a girl in mid-adolescence, full of teenage drama. When Lady Capulet (Alexandra Basmagy) brought Paris (Andrii Ishchuk) into Juliet’s rooms for the first time, the grin Teuscher gave her nurse (Claire Davison) was telling. Teuscher was excited about the prospect of courtship, yet still not yet convinced she was excited about Paris; she took his hand but quickly ducked away. She was also not shocked when the nurse pointed to her breasts and told her she was growing up; she was again excited.
The next dance for Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio before the Capulet ball didn’t show them off as a natural trio. The secondary men still seemed to be finding their way into the role. Sung Woo Han, who was promoted to soloist shortly after, was off the other two and had two expressions as Benvolio: mirthful or concerned. In Mercutio’s solos, Garegin Pogossian tended to be more energetic than clean or on his leg.
The three sneaked into the palace of the Capulets, crashing a ball that contains some of the most memorably oppressive music in ballet. Prokofiev’s ponderous melody weighed the attendees down as they did each arduous step and kneel. An interlude gave Juliet a moment as a debutante. Paris supported her in airy jumps and Teuscher’s reaction to Ishchuk suggested that she could have learned to be fine with him as the husband chosen for her. She set up her boundaries using Lady Capulet at one side and Tybalt at the other to indicate her focus. Paris tried to kiss her and she pulled her hand and fled like an overstimulated cat – straight into Romeo.
Physically, Teuscher and Bell make sense together. they’re both tall and long, and can do the tough, acrobatic partnering. It’s hard for anyone to explain or believably depict love at first sight, we have to believe the concept exists. Bell and Teuscher saw it as profound fascination and curiosity; both of them kept straining to catch a glimpse of the other across the room.
One thing ABT doesn’t get enough credit for: their narrative ballets, especially the ones that have been in repertory a while, are well-acted. ABT isn’t a company of beautiful mimes, but that’s the difference between diction and expression. If they aren’t the most polished, the dancers know what they’re doing and why. Teuscher and Bell tried to accidentally run into one another while switching partners inside a round dance, and the Capulet ball was a real pas d’action, like the reel in “La Sylphide.” The story pushed forward inside the dance numbers.
The dynamic between Tybalt and Juliet was straightforward: she was his kid cousin and he loved her. Forster’s characterization of Tybalt was similarly straightforward: he had a short fuse. After the ball Lady Capulet made the subtext of her attraction to Tybalt explicit as she lightly stroked his chest while talking to him.
The balcony pas de deux is the first act’s big tote-and-carry duet. You could see why Bell made it to principal so quickly. If he didn’t have the stamina to complete every line all the way to his feet, it might have been because he was busy flipping, lifting and carrying Teuscher overhead, at one point pressing her upwards using his thighs. He’s still young, but he’s a strong, able partner and got through the laborious hauling that even some great Romeos have to simplify.
Like Daniel Camargo’s Siegfried with Odette, meeting Juliet completely changed Bell’s Romeo. Everything in Act 2 is suddenly different and his relationships with his friends, and the harlots, can’t keep up. He also realized how that might feel to them and tried to make amends.
Pogossian threw himself around leading the mandolin dance, but he was more in sync with Han when they danced together. In his brief solo, Bell pulled off six double saut de basques one after another. Not bad. Luckett was double cast both as Escalus and Friar Laurence. He made a link of their ineffectual authority.
Romeo came back from his secret nuptials to a passeggiata and a wedding. Despite MacMillan’s emphasis on street scenes, they add up to a portrait of Verona that feels familiar; a discontented place of brawls and squabbling, even among kinsmen. Tybalt arrived with blood on his mind. Again, Forster’s approach was direct. He wasn’t drunk, there were no other factors. He came to find Romeo and fight him, clapping his swords together to get Romeo’s attention.
The convention of Romeo turning into a love-struck wimp doesn’t play well onstage. It might be a better idea, instead of playing not-fighting Tybalt, to play trying to distract Tybalt. Still, Mercutio’s frustration with Romeo is what impels him to fight Tybalt in Romeo’s stead. A more questionable choice is for Mercutio to back into Tybalt’s sword. It’s done often enough, but it never works for Mercutio to die by accident. Tybalt has to kill him, otherwise Romeo has little reason for revenge.
Mercutio’s endless death scene is also awkward for the crowd, with everyone standing there playing not being able to do anything. In truth, that’s probably what would happen in real life. But onstage, it means standing around watching the short guy take forever to die. It helps to find some other things to do.
Tybalt pointed to Mercutio’s dead body to get Romeo to finally fight: Avenge him. Forster waited at the back tapping his sword until Bell finally came at him. There was a point where Forster went from driving the swordplay to Bell pushing it. Forster backed up and finally Bell shoved his sword into Forster’s belly, violently gutting him in a fit of rage. It’s as real an emotion as it is literary; Vietnam vets have described the same berserk rage after the death of a comrade. Romeo only came to his senses after Tybalt was dead.
The structure of Prokofiev (and MacMillan’s) Act 3 is like a room with movable walls, and they’re closing in. A lot happens, and it goes as fast as if the walls tilted as well. The lovers had one last moment together before Romeo had to leave due to his banishment. Teuscher pitched and spun into Bell, and for a moment covered her mouth in adolescent frustration before trying to cover him with kisses.
Where Act 2 centers on Romeo, Act 3 is Juliet’s. The trouble that we saw in the street – trouble Juliet is insulated from; her world is all within her parent’s home – penetrated to her bedchamber. Lord Capulet and Lady Capulet came in, Lady Capulet in mourning for Tybalt, bringing Paris. Yet Juliet was alone.
Teuscher tapped into the stores of sullen rebellion in her inner 16-year-old. The nurse betrayed her; she can’t explain the situation to her parents. When told to accept Paris, Teuscher drifted up on to her points and fluttered away backwards, removing herself in delicate rebellion.
Another signature moment: When she sat on the bed at the moment of resolve, Teuscher didn’t stay stock still. She looked round. You could sense her frustration and trapped feeling, and how the swelling music transformed them into decisive action.
She visited Friar Laurence, got the potion and returned to a room full of unhappy people. Lady Capulet wouldn’t talk to Lord Capulet, Paris was furious, but Juliet was forced to dance with him. A memory from almost four decades ago: When Natalia Makarova danced Juliet, the lifts she did here would go straight up soundlessly as if she weighed nothing. They were eerie for their lightness and conveyed the sense of being unable to control what was going on around her. Teuscher took the opposite approach. She gave Ishchuk no help and made him muscle her up like dead weight. It made sense as a form of resistance. She couldn’t do anything but make it harder for him. But finally Juliet assented, kneeling with a head nod but no more, and the walls closed in farther.
Her final dance with Romeo is done while she’s unconscious in her tomb, seemingly dead. It’s a tour de force, she has to make it look as if she’s not doing anything; Teuscher camouflaged what help she was giving Bell expertly, springing into him exactly as he tugged her arms.
The quick pacing, like a train barreling down its tracks, makes the timing excruciating: Romeo poisoned himself, just as he died Juliet woke up. Teuscher found Paris’ corpse sprawled on the ground, ran away, looked around in horror and backed into Romeo. Unlike some other Juliets, she didn’t act as if he might be asleep and try to wake him. She knew where she was, knew that she had already encountered one body, and knew that Romeo was dead. She went decisively for the knife near Paris (not fair to Teuscher, but the prop “happy dagger” had no intention of finding its sheath quietly. It recoiled from the stabbing with an audible sproing). In another moment each Juliet makes her own, Teuscher made it all the way across the bier to him, holding his hand as she died a heroine.
The world of Prokofiev’s score was no less certain than the lovers’. When Prokofiev composed the ballet in 1935, political realities required that it have a happy ending. Politics bounced the project from the Kirov to the Bolshoi to being shelved. It was produced onstage, in Brno, at the end of 1938, in a fragile Czechoslovakian republic on the eve of annexation. Prokofiev could not attend due to the political difficulties of traveling abroad.
The ballet was finally produced in January, 1940 at the Kirov Theater by Leonid Lavrovsky with a score substantially revised and an ending closer to Shakespeare’s. War had already engulfed Europe. Within two years Leningrad would be under siege, and the strife of two houses would become a world in flames.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Romeo and Juliet” – American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House, New York, NY
July 12, 2022
Cover: Devon Teuscher in “Romeo and Juliet.” Photo © Gene Schiavone
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