A lean 'Romeo and Juliet' less than thrilling

January 30, 2012|By Sid Smith, Special to the Tribune

All the grand passion aside, the State Ballet Theatre of Russia's "Romeo and Juliet" is a lean, workmanlike affair, technically clean but rarely inspiring.

Limited scenic effects don't help, the result, in part, of the challenges of a road tour. Still, other traveling troupes manage more technical panache, while this production, which played the Auditorium Theatre over the weekend, failed to rise above its ho hum sets, mostly a matter of layers of onstage curtains. What can you say about a production of "R and J" that leaves out the balcony and stages the lovers' rendezvous on a flat terrace?

That odd choice not only robs the scene of its two-story choreographic thrills, but telegraphs the lapse in ingenuity that haunts the whole production. There were other technical shortcomings, including a lighting system Saturday that seemed to have a mind of its own, flickering at times and once going on and off abruptly. But the main disappointment lies in Mikhail Lavrovsky's choreography, which is mostly humdrum and threadbare, even if executed nicely.

His various duets for the couple--typically the high points for this ultra-romantic tale--lacked excitement, often structurally a repetitious pattern of the two dancers starting widely apart, racing together and embracing at stage center, racing back apart, and then repeating the maneuver, all of it spruced with a few dramatic lifts. These shortcomings are all the more obvious given the soaring qualities of Sergei Prokofiev's great score, one of the most hypnotic in all of ballet.

Meanwhile, as a director, Lavrovsky employs plentiful histrionics, the various characters swaying and flailing their arms in grief to the point of near hysteria. The contrast between high emotion and workmanlike choreography isn't enticing.

There are some virtues. The dancers are attractive and sharp, Yulia Nepomnyashchaya a beautiful, princessly Juliet Saturday and Alexander Lityagin a handsome, towering Romeo. The cast is buoyant and energetic, though most of the secondary players get too little to do. And while he fails to deliver in key scenes, Lavrovsky deserves credit for tinkering with the ensemble dancing, injecting echoes of brisk, lively folk dance into the crowd festivities and crafting an especially eerie spectral corps of mourners near the end.