STAGE REVIEW: ROMEO AND JULIET

A scene from Romeo and Juliet.

1000

By Ed Rampell

“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” Why, along with his gal pal Juliet, he’s at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion through Sunday, July 13, as the National Ballet of Canada presents Sergei Prokofiev’s version of Romeo and Juliet. Alexei Ratmansky, the Bolshoi Ballet’s former artistic director, choreographed this elegant production that renders William Shakespeare’s immortal play about doomed young lovers into the idiom of dance and music, pure sight and sound.

As we celebrate the 450^th birthday of the Bard who is best known for his plots and arguably (to quote Polonius in Hamlet) “this above all else” his dialogue, it’s intriguing to encounter a Shakespearean experience minus a single spoken line. Can one appreciate the Stratford-upon-Avon dramatist’s work without one word uttered? Is the text as meaningful without any of Will’s indelible dialogue, such as Mercutio’s curse: “A plague upon both your houses”? (Contrary to popular belief, Romeo’s buddy was not referring to the Democratic and Republican parties, but rather to those warring families, the Capulets and Montagues, from whence our title characters sprang.)

The characters and the entire story are expressed through Prokofiev’s music, Ratmansky’s gravity-defying choreo, Jennifer Tipton’s lighting, as well as by Richard Hudson’s set and costume design, which are all important, as they enhance a sense of time (the Renaissance) and place (“fair Verona”). Another important element that tends to be overlooked amidst ballet’s Balanchine- and Nijinsky-like aeronautics is acting. Since there is no spoken dialogue this acting is most akin to that of the cinema prior to talkies, when thespians had to use facial expressions, body movements and the like to convey what they couldn’t by voicing lines. (Notice, Dear Reader, that I didn’t say “silent films,” because many of those early movies were accompanied by piano and even orchestras -- often with music specifically composed for particular pictures. And given Prokofiev’s sonorous score, the ballet is anything but silent.)

Although not as essential as their dancing per se, on opening night the acting by Moscow-born Elena Lobsanova and Quebec-born Guillaume Côté as Shakespeare’s “star-crossed lovers” (other dancers alternate in the Juliet and Romeo roles) was vital in conveying the drama’s romanticism and adolescent angst (worthy of a WB series, by the way). The premiere’s best acting was by Poland-born Piotr Stanczyk as the mercurial, merry Mercutio of the Montagues. His clowning around (Mercutio is surely one of those people who doesn’t know when to quit kidding or enough is enough) is as significant to Stanczyk’s part as is his deft, daft dancing. Not to mention the scene-stealing Stanczyk’s swordplay, as Mercutio crosses blades with the Capulet clan’s menacing McGee Maddox as Tybalt, the quintessential character when it comes to not quite getting the joke. (Both Stanczyk and Maddox alternate in the roles with other performers, but reprise their parts on the evening of July 12.)    

Naturally, the choreography elevates and heightens the drama. When the title characters meet at a masked ball in the Capulets’ household, it’s interesting to see the ballet version of this initial encounter and to compare it with the brilliantly lensed scene in the school gym in 1961’s West Side Story, where all time and space stops as Tony just meets a girl named Maria in that latter day adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set in New York City. When she leaps through the air to alight upon Romeo’s shoulders or back, 27-ish year old Elena Lobsanova’s Juliet seems to be in flight. The two lovers look like birds taking wing in an almost aerial pas de deux in her bedroom, with its four-poster bed and canopy -- an especially lyrical evocation of lovemaking’s raptures. 

From the vantage point of my center row seats in the orchestra, Lobsanova and Côté also looked like teenagers, which seems age appropriate per Shakespeare’s text. The youthfulness of 18-year-old Leonard Whiting and 17-year-old Olivia Hussey helped make Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film version so refreshing and memorable, whereas in 1936, 43-year-old Leslie Howard and 34-year-old Norma Shearer essayed the roles in George Cukor’s screen version of  Romeo and Juliet -- with a 54-year-old John Barrymore as Mercutio!)

Prokofiev’s superb score, which he’d composed by 1935, is ably performed by an orchestra consisting of local musicians and conducted by the National Ballet of Canada’s music director and principal conductor, David Briskin. Audiences will likely recognize the dissonant "Dance of the Knights", which has been used in movies such as Caligula and TV shows like The Simpsons and the British reality series, The Apprentice. This piece, also known as “Montagues and Capulets”, conjures a mood of foreboding musically expressed through the strings playing pianissimo or softly, contrasted by the woodwinds and horns blowing fortissimo. Prokofiev has a very strong visual sense which served him well in composing music for ballet -- shortly after creating Romeo and Juliet’s sonic score he joined with that other Sergei (Eisenstein) to compose the score for the 1938 epic, Alexander Nevsky. The composer and director closely collaborated on this movie, with Prokofiev composing notes to accompany Eisenstein’s frames of film.

Speaking of which, the National Ballet of Canada production, overseen by artistic director Karen Kain, uses cinematic sleight of hand. Not only in the rapid scene changes but in what is a clever use of split screen, which, minus Shakespeare’s dialogue, is intended to explain how Friar Lawrence’s (Peter Ottmann alternates in this role with Kevin Bowles) potions will affect Juliet. Alas  poor sweet Juliet and her beloved Romeo experience what is probably the stage’s biggest mix up, and their poor timing results in… But you know how the rest of it goes, don’t you dear reader?

I have one minor complaint: the famous balcony scene actually does not feature a balcony per se, but merely Juliet at her window, as the two say sweet nothings to one another. At least Tony and Maria got a fire escape in West Side Story! But this is a mere quibble that should not deter viewers from strapping on their ballet shoes and dancing down to the Music Center while they still can to experience what is otherwise a superb, effervescent production of the Bard’s classic (by way of Prokofiev) with its eternal message: Make love, not war.

Romeo and Juliet runs through tomorrow at LA Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 2130-72-8001; www.laopera.com.

DANCE REVIEW: RITE OF SPRING

A scene from Joffrey Ballet's Rite of Spring.

Without weapons

By Ed Rampell

L.A.’s Music Center is celebrating the 100^thanniversary of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) with performances of the work that rocked the classical dance world’s sense of decorum with a rendition by the renowned Joffrey Ballet that strives to reconstruct its May 29, 1913 contentious premiere at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. That dazzling debut danced by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes -- with music by Igor Stravinsky, choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, scenario and designs by Nicholas Roerich -- rather infamously made a bewildered Parisian audience go wild in the seats, with a near riot and firing of apocryphal gunshots. After only a handful of performances, the controversial production was shutdown, and Le Sacre du Printemps was rarely presented as first seen and heard until the Joffrey’s 1987 reconstruction of the original.

The good news is that while the Angelenos filling the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion did not appear to be pistol-packing, Le Sacre du Printemps still packs a punch a century later. And while the seats might have been sold out, the creators’ artistic vision, which the Joffrey endeavors to faithfully recreate here, has not been sold out. With its primordial strong sexual undertones the story which the quartet (if you include Diaghilev) of collaborators sought to tell is suggested by the mythology and primitive pagan past of the fearsome foursome’s native Russia. In essence, it is the expression of an ancestral ancient fertility ritual and sacrificial offering through sound and sight, the latter in terms of choreography, costuming and painted backdrops. The finale hints at what may be a gang rape.

The ballet opens with the plaintive plea of a bassoon, but this serene solo swiftly explodes in Stravinsky’s score, which has more bars than Dublin. More woodwinds and strings join in, followed by brass and percussion as what appears to be shepherds, farmers, hunters and gatherers in a rural setting garbed in toga, Roman sandals, colorful peasant blouses and harlequin type costumes engage in a sort of convocation of the tribes. Together they dance the Augurs of Spring, expressing their adoration of the fertile, life-giving soil, giving thanks to Yarilo, the Slavic sun god of legend. As the 1913 program put it, “Everyone tramples the Earth with ecstasy.” Indeed.

As the often dissonant music builds, Nijinsky’s choreography ranges from the sublime to stamping and stomping, from the harmonious to the herky-jerky. In Act II, The Sacrifice, the menacing music, with much pounding of the sharkskins and trumpet blaring, almost seems to be announcing that the Polynesian Luana is going to be tossed into a volcano a la Bird of Paradise or that King Kong enters stage left. Indeed, in the second act, like those filmic vestal virgins Dolores del Rio or Fay Wray, a maiden (and presumably her maidenhead) is sacrificed to the heathen god, as she literally dances herself to death.

At least three of Roerich’s pastoral backdrops are reproduced here. All seemed to my eye to be in the Fauvist mode then in vogue with the European avant-garde, as typified by Henri Matisse. But Roerich’s expressionistic, mural-size paintings are far less joyous than Matisse’s canvases, and in all of them cumulus clouds gather ominously. Jack Mehler’s subtle lighting (after Thomas Skelton) changes the coloring of the clouds which, like the Joffrey’s whirling dervishes, are aswirl. This version’s costumes and decors are after Roerich, with scenic supervision and costumes executed by Robert Perdiola and Sally Ann Parsons.

The ballet’s heady mix of sex and violence can still cause 2013 spectators, like their Parisian forebears in 1913, to exclaim “Sacre bleu!” at Le Sacre du Printemps. (Indeed, a recent acid attack on the Bolshoi’s artistic director has caused the company’s 100^th anniversary performances of the ballet to be postponed. Apparently some still regard The Rite to be a bad acid trip.)

Interestingly, however, the sacred Le Sacre du Printemps didn’t score the evening’s biggest standing ovation. Also on the program preceding it were the ballets Age of Innocence, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated and After the Rain. It was the second part of the latter which had the Chandler’s denizens leap to their feet hurling kudos and “bravos” at the male and female duet who tenderly danced a pas de deux containing more sensuousness and passion than any porn flick. With her exquisite extensions, if not precisely prim and proper, the pink leotard clad dancer put the prima into ballerina. She and her bare-chested partner danced to Spiegel im Spiegel, with the breathtakingly executed choreographed lovemaking wrought by Christopher Wheeldon and music composed by Estonian Arvo Pärt.

The Music Center’s presentation of The Rite of Spring launches L.A.’s Rite: Stravinsky, Innovation and Dance, a festival honoring the composer who became an émigré here in the City of the Angels during WWII. The festival will include the participation of longtime L.A. Phil conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and intermittently take place through October 2013, the centennial year of Stravinsky’s most influential -- if only rarely glimpsed in its original sound and fury -- work. All one can say is: Rite on! All power to the ballerinas!  

 

Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) runs tonight, 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 3 at 2:00 p.m.  at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: (213)972-8555; www.musiccenter.org