by Leigh Witchel
As Juliet, Catherine Hurlin never forgot to give a performance as well as live it in Romeo and Juliet. Her Romeo at American Ballet Theatre, Calvin Royal III, certainly lived the part, but had more hiccups performing it.
Juliet is in the pantheon of roles female ballet dancers dream of, but there is no single canonical version, and no touchstone technical moments, such as 32 fouettés. You’ve got to be able to act, and Hurlin can. She was clear and unmannered, but detailed.
Hurlin’s characterization wasn’t complicated, rather it was relatable. This headstrong, energetic girl, comfortable and happy in her own room with her own toys; we’ve all met someone like her before.
She burst into her bedchamber on her first entrance, worrying the nurse with her doll – WHEE! – her legs everywhere, flicking high. She’s tall and elongated, with beautiful legs. It’s hard not to be drawn to her easy arabesques.
When introduced to Paris (Eric Tamm), Hurlin was kittenish, willing at first to play, but she drifted away from him when he got too close and she had enough. She made an impatient face when her parents lingered because she wanted to get back to playing with her dolls. At the same time, her nurse’s reminder that she was growing up didn’t surprise her. Rather, she was excited.
As well-trod as the path of playing Juliet is, Hurlin found details of her own to mix in with well-tested approaches. At the ball, she entered the hall as if she’d never seen it in use before, as most Juliets do. They diverge when dancing with Paris. Hurlin made it clear she was gradually going from liking the attention paid towards discomfort at not having a say in any of it. She pulled her hands away when he tried to take them, and that’s when she turned around and saw Romeo.
There are different ways of showing a coup de foudre. Some Juliets go very still. As she walked around, or played the lute, Hurlin made it clear her Juliet had butterflies in her stomach. She acted with her breath, as if almost hyperventilating, but she danced her solo with an adult’s control: connected phrases of high swinging legs, and tight footwork.
From our first glimpse of him, Royal showed Romeo as a dreamer, reclining and mooning at the front of the stage, even before he met Juliet. His dancing, including in the Act 1 trio and his solo during the ball, had a long, light quality, which was a mixed blessing.
In the trio with Mercutio and Benvolio or in the balcony duet, Royal’s sense of being about to lift from his chest and shoulders into the air could have been an analogue for his high spirits. But in complex jumps, such as the ones he did in his first solo in Act 2, that look of him pulling himself up into the air rather than pushing off from the ground made him seem spidery. Tamm was a good contrast as he was more grounded.
Hurlin has a gift for comedy that would be interesting to see flower. She was funny, but not coarse when the nurse wandered in as she first met Romeo alone during the ball. “Oh, it’s just you, get out already!”
Even going on 60, MacMillan’s version of Romeo and Juliet still has new details to notice every performance. Juliet assenting to Tybalt later during the same interlude, but thrilled to catch a glimpse of Romeo concealed at the front. Or when Romeo partnered Juliet at the end of her solo during the ball, and the whole party slowly, almost imperceptibly, closed in on them.
Hurlin and Royal had lovely proportions together, as well as chemistry. You would see their thrill in the gavotte when they caught sight of one another. In the balcony pas de deux, both got the sense of youthful abandon, with Royal sailing through saut de basques and throwing his arms out to invite her to him. Hurlin never played the end; she was lighthearted and excited by love. She went up in his arms pointing skywards and then relaxed into him as if growing comfortable with him physically, sighing and putting her head on his.
The lightness was mixed with strength as she leaped across the stage at him, or gave him a final, decisive kiss that shocked even herself. An integral part of her Juliet was a sense of awakening, the appearance of a person even she didn’t know was there.
Thomas Forster’s Tybalt had a bully’s cowardice. At his first entrance, accompanied by two henchmen, he instructed them to grab a woman he had his eye on. Like a bully, he had someone else do his dirty work. Even at the confrontation with Romeo at the ball, he seemed to be using Lord Capulet as his backup, seeming to check that the older man was alongside when he pushed Romeo. At the same time, he had a long fuse, avoiding blowing up in the street, when it wasn’t on his home turf.
Still, some of the leads ran into trouble. Carlos Gonzalez’ Mercutio had fewer issues with the acting than the dancing. Gonzalez took risks and ripped through his turns, but didn’t hit a clean retiré position. His landings weren’t clean either, and his hips were tilted. It all looked clenched. When he and Benvolio (Patrick Frenette) stood next to one another, you could see the difference in placement. It made sense Frenette was just promoted to soloist.
In Romeo, mirroring a general tendency in ballet, many things have been toned down to avoid even the potential of offense. So it was surprising to see how coarsely the men were playing the jokes. Rather than lightly breaking through couples at the ball in his Act 1 variation, Frenette was shoving them out of the way. Things really got coarse when Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio danced with Luciana Paris as the nurse, with each going for fistfuls of her ass. Not great.
Things broke down at the duels, whether it was bad luck or lack of sufficient rehearsal and practice. Forster was not a strong swordsman. That could be a choice: why he got others to do his bullying for him. But he muffed the catch when Mercutio tossed him a sword, and had to scramble to get it in time to accidentally back into Mercutio.
The favored blocking at ABT of Mercutio backing into Tybalt’s sword flat-out didn’t work, and never has, at least in my viewing. For one thing, how does aimless wandering translate to enough force to run a sword all the way through a body? More importantly, if Mercutio’s death was a tragic fluke, it doesn’t help Romeo make a decision to kill Tybalt. Forster had a good moment after Gonzalez’ death, though, putting the tip of his sword on the ground and looking at Royal, waiting. “You. Avenge him.”
But Royal made a hazardous choice. He escalated to hysteria, which made emotional sense but also made everything messy. Royal staggered to his sword, then flailed it wildly. Sigh. The blade managed to detach and fly away, leaving him only with the hilt. He kept furiously swinging the hilt for what felt like about five minutes (and was probably a few seconds) until one of the men thought fast and handed him his own sword. A Capulet, no less. Royal went to a two-handed grip, whacked Forster’s sword out of his hands and gored him. Forster jumped at Royal, and reached him, (usually Tybalt misses), but died trying to reach his sword. All of these choices could have worked if the basics had stayed under control. Instead it was material for a blooper reel.
Royal kept that frantic energy through Act 3, whipping Hurlin round into lifts in the bedroom pas de deux. It’s probably how Romeo actually felt, but as she beseeched the heavens or smothered him with kisses, it felt as if Hurlin was carrying the act, if not the whole performance. He gave her a final kiss and made his escape.
The scene where Juliet’s parents try to convince her to marry Paris is always one of the most poignant in ABT’s staging. Not only Juliet is suffering, Lady and Lord Capulet are reeling from the death of Tybalt, and Paris is desperate for his new bride to finally be happy with their impending marriage.
The drama had a level of intimate detail as if it were happening in close-up, but as the earlier scenes were more coarse, the emotions were kicked up here. Alexei Agoudine’s Lord Capulet was more potentially violent than most others. When he left, he held a single quiet finger but he looked as if the next time he might strike her. Claire Davison’s Lady Capulet was more controlled, telling her husband to wait. The nurse tried to explain to Juliet that she couldn’t intervene. Tamm also played Paris as more angry than he’s been played, turning to Agoudine and with a irritated gesture telling him to deal with his daughter.
The anger extended to Hurlin. She didn’t make her bourrées away from Paris into a beautiful trick of drifting and rippling toe work, as Natalia Makarova or Diana Vishneva did. She turned her cheek away from her family and rattled away tight and hard. It was adolescent rebellion.
Hurlin didn’t try for any kind of charismatic alchemy during the bed scene, but she still could sit there and hold the stage. The decisiveness in Hurlin’s Juliet makes her attractive to a contemporary audience. She was shoved from girlhood into adulthood and was trying to rise to the occasion, but without good advice and support. The same decisiveness showed when she went to Friar Laurence. She was horrified by the idea of swallowing even something that only mimicked poison, but prayed with him, and swiftly held out her hand for the phial. “Give it to me.”
Her Act 3 felt like someone trying to find a path out of a pitch-black room. When she returned to her bedchamber, like all Juliets, she shunned the nurse, before begging her mother to take her side. Agoudine dug his hand into Hurlin’s upper arm and dragged her in a circle before pointing to to Paris.
She walked towards Paris with slow, wobbly stalks on pointe, and kicked and struggled as he set her down out of a lift. Everyone looked at her as she stood still by the window from where Romeo had fled; it offered hope but no exit. To her, the potion felt like the only way out. When she assented to her family’s wishes, she backed away, made a frozen bow, and when Paris tried to embrace her she did the same angry bourrée once more. Perhaps the most tragic quality of Hurlin’s Juliet was her strength.
Alone once again, Hurlin approached the potion bottle in unsteady walks sideways. She prayed at the altar in her room, and once again, decisiveness. She grabbed the bottle and downed it. Her reaction to the drug was again her own, slamming her stomach as if trying to induce vomiting. She staggered back dazed to the bed and blew a kiss to the window before collapsing.
The tomb duet went very well, but not before Royal had another fumble, trying to find his knife in his pouch before killing Paris, like an old woman rummaging through her purse. Argh. Royal had been playing full-on hysteria since the duel in Act 2. He had basically been working at a shout and it was taking its toll.
Still, he partnered Hurlin expertly and she did a great job with the timing and illusion of being dead weight. It didn’t look as if she were trying to control her positions, but of course she was.
At his last moment, Royal was as decisive as Hurlin, flicking open the vial of poison he brought and downing it. I’m not the measure of a production, but still, by this time, I would usually be in tears. I was dry-eyed.
And again, Hurlin carried the performance with her decisiveness. Like most current Juliets, she’s dispensed with the pretense of early ABT Juliets, like Makarova, of Juliet at first not realizing Romeo was dead. You could see the life drain out of Hurlin’s arms as she looked at him.
Her final act against wasn’t about heroism but, again, decisiveness. She went to the knife, and jammed it into her belly. Reaching him, she put her cheek in his hand before doing what every Juliet in this production must do, point her feet beautifully and do a huge cambré back for that Instagram death.
No matter how in the moment you are in a performance of Romeo and Juliet, you’ve still got to hit your marks and work your props. Hurlin found a balance between emotional abandon and being in control of what she was doing.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
Romeo and Juliet – American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House, New York, NY
July 13, 2024
Cover: Catherine Hurlin in Romeo and Juliet. Photo © Mena Brunette.
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