Romeo and Juliet (Pastor) Romeo and Juliet (Pastor) Romeo and Juliet is a 2008 ballet choreographed by Krzysztof Pastor based on William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet". Pastor's three-act version is set to the same score used in the Prokofiev version of the ballet. The libretto is by Pastor and Willem Bruls. The ballet is recast as a contemporary political statement set in three Italian political eras of the 20th century. Act I is set in Italy in the 1930s, during the reign of Benito Mussolini and the emergence of Fascism. (1935 was the year in which Prokofiev composed the original score.) Act II
Romeo and Juliet (1936 film) starred Katharine Cornell as Juliet, Basil Rathbone as Romeo, Brian Aherne as Mercutio, and Edith Evans as The Nurse. Rathbone is the only actor from the 1934 revival to appear in the film, albeit in the role of Tybalt rather than Romeo. On the stage Tybalt was played by nineteen year old Orson Welles. Thalberg's stated intention was "to make the production what Shakespeare would have wanted had he possessed the facilities of cinema." He went to great lengths to establish authenticity and the film's intellectual credentials: researchers were sent to Verona to take photographs for the designers; the paintings