Verona unbound

Daniel Pelzig liberates Romeo and Juliet

by Jeffrey Gantz

ROMEO AND JULIET, Music by Serge Prokofiev. Choreography by Daniel Pelzig. Set by Alain Vaës. Lighting by Mary Jo Dondlinger. Costumes by Henry Heymann, after the design by Alain Vaës. Presented by Boston Ballet at the Wang Center through November 2.

Let's cut right to the chase: Boston Ballet has a new Romeo and Juliet, and it's leagues better than the distinguished 1984 Choo San Goh version -- in fact, it's one of the best ballet productions the Wang Center has seen. It retains, of course, the superb "book" (Shakespeare's dark night of love) and score (Prokofiev's bass-and-bassoon-drenched bad-dream equivalent). Alain Vaës's costumes are back: innocuous powder-pastel and cream tones for the Montagues, seething crimson and black for the Capulets, underlining the "new mutiny" between these two Verona households. Also in place are Vaës's astonishing sets, whose prison-like architecture suggests a terra cotta fairytale designed by Aldo Rossi and explains why the lovers have to escape.

What's different is the choreography. The late Choo San Goh introduced a controversial element with his gray-unitard-clad Fate; he also left us some stunning moments (remember those lascivious Capulet backbends?). But ballet convention -- subsidiary figures and non-narrative divertissements -- still prevailed; Fate's vocabulary was limited to attitude-arabesque-chaîné-bourrée; and the junior-prom moves for Romeo and Juliet didn't offer anything you wouldn't see in Snow White. The new version by Daniel Pelzig, the company's resident choreographer, is more direct, more dramatic, more dangerous. Informed by Renaissance art and dance, it goes to the tragic heart of Shakespeare's play while echoing the lurking horror of Prokofiev's music and the no-exit vanishing points of Vaës's set design.

Vaës remains the key to this Romeo and Juliet. His frontpiece looks sunny and inviting, with its red brick and burnt umber, but we're hemmed in left and right by palazzi (the Montague and Capulet compounds?) and blocked by columns, and beyond we're cut off from the countryside by faceless façades with tiny windows. The marketplace is a peculiar affair, all loggia, with a tiny, claustrophobic piazza whose Donatello-like equestrian statue is positioned behind yet another column, so we can't see the rider. It's an architecture of repression, even Fascism: the only emotion that doesn't get buried is hate.

Pelzig wastes no time making connections between Renaissance Verona and Mussolini's Italy. The opening market scene finds Montagues and Capulets wallowing in the kind of pathological contempt Italian football fans spew upon cross-city rivals; there are obscene gestures and hints of goosestepping. The erotic backbends of the Capulet Ball (over which a wall-to-wall panel inspired by Paolo Uccello's The Battle of San Romano looms menacingly) have been replaced by an eerie pavane-passeggiata whose sadistic hand movements bespeak sexual domination and control. When Juliet enters, she joins in at the reprises, the child learning from her family; it's a horrific moment. Not as horrific, however, as the climax of this sequence, when (as the ominous syncopations of the ball music return) Lord Capulet throws his daughter to the floor after she refuses to marry chosen suitor Paris. In vain Juliet clings to her nurse, to her mother -- they daren't oppose the patriarchal authority (though the noli me tangere back-of-the-hand that Lady Capulet flashes at her husband suggests he'll be sleeping alone for a while). Fascism, Pelzig is telling us, starts at home.

No wonder Romeo and Juliet are desperate to break out. Both marketplace scenes take place in broad daylight, both end in bloodshed, and in neither do the lovers appear together. They meet indoors, or under the sheltering cloak of night, or in the Capulet tomb. Their balcony pas de deux offers our one real glimpse of Verona unbound, of plane trees and poplars and cypresses beyond the garden wall, while a galaxy of constellations look on -- these lovers aren't star-crossed but star-blessed. Pelzig creates for them a fleeting moment of social acceptance when they dance with the other guests at the ball -- but Romeo is masked. When they kneel and face each other (and us) at their wedding, they're acknowledging us as the only public who'll accept them. After the confrontation with her father, Juliet draws her bedroom curtain and shuts out the world.

Pelzig conveys all this by replacing Choo San Goh's balletic Romeo with a more Shakespearean (but still balletic) version that's packed with dramatic detail. Right from the start he catches the way young Italians hang out in public, guys with guys and girls with girls -- till Romeo sees a pretty face and runs after it. The ballroom dancing is based on Renaissance models, yet in the second marketplace sequence the Montagues strut their stuff in front of the Capulet toughs à la the high-school dance in West Side Story. The set changes are a show in themselves: after Juliet has been introduced to Paris and is sitting on her bed, Lady Capulet comes downstage (as if sensing her imminent separation from her daughter), the Capulet housefront descends, and suddenly she's standing outside, ready to dally briefly with Tybalt before entering the house to preside over the ball. Even better is the courtyard that descends to mask the ball (Juliet swooning over Romeo as she and the Nurse pass through, Romeo running after them, a besotted Mercutio and friends following) before rising to reveal the balcony.

As for Fate, she's out -- not just the Choo San Goh figure, but the entire concept. Pelzig's Romeo is all about character. The young Lady Capulet and her handsome nephew Tybalt aren't merely an item, as in other versions -- they're a whole story of stolen glances and filched embraces and warning looks. The end of the ball finds them going in to supper arm in arm, and as the courtyard panel drops, you can just see their feet turn toward each other. She trembles with rage and hysteria over Tybalt's corpse (in front of a perplexed Lord Capulet); in the tomb the Nurse has to drag her away from his bier.

Mercutio gets an oversized quill pen (which he sometimes uses as a sword), a commedia-like bird mask suggesting hawk-nosed Pantalone, and some of Pelzig's best moves: his cock-of-the-walk baiting of Tybalt at the ball; his soused spiraling sitspin and hilarious imitations of Lady C and the Nurse; his bewildered dance of death (which, like the swordplay, is outstandingly realistic -- I kept thinking he might pull through). Relieved of her hoop skirts, the Nurse shows her sly side; she's less an object of comic ridicule and more a protector and confidante to Juliet -- as Romeo acknowledges when he thanks her for her help after the wedding. Pelzig's Paris is a gentle soul who presents himself to Juliet with the utmost delicacy; his lone fault is that he's not Romeo. Friar Laurence shows a becoming reluctance to marry Romeo to his heartthrob-of-the-moment, and he's even less enthusiastic when it transpires that the prospective bride is Capulet's daughter; it takes the Nurse's reassurance to make him relent.

There are no wasted moments. At the laying-down of arms Lady Capulet snubs Lady Montague by declining to return her bow. At the ball Lord Capulet cuts in on Paris so he can dance with his daughter (raised eyebrows optional), leaving his wife to Tybalt. (Don't miss the way Pelzig uses a long diagonal here to suggest a military parade.) Mime is kept to a minimum, as in Friar Laurence's compact and expressive explanation to Juliet about the sleeping potion. This Romeo is thoroughly thought out, right down to the white chrysanthemum petals that the mourners scatter in front of Juliet's bier. Pelzig enjoys the superlative contributions of lighting designer Mary Jo Dondlinger (ringing innumerable subtle changes on the ball, and in the "weather" of Vaës's frontpiece) and the Boston Ballet Orchestra under Jonathan McPhee (you'd be lucky to hear Prokofiev's score done this well in Symphony Hall).

Which leaves the new choreography. It's more expressive than Choo San Goh's, and if the two big pas de deux for the lovers don't register as a series of memorable moments, that's only to say that Pelzig is the sort of choreographer whose moments live in his dancers, not in the imagination. This isn't Grand Ballet placed on a pedestal for us to admire and applaud -- it's drama brought to life through dance. Everything here has the look of having been created on and for the dancers. If there are no showstoppers in Pelzig's Romeo, well, there aren't any in Shakespeare's, either. Pelzig's aesthetic is clean and classic. He provides the ideas and relies on the dancers to make them breathe.

And what dancers he has! The opening-night duo of Patrick Armand and Pollyana Ribeiro might just be the best Romeo and Juliet this company has seen. Armand hasn't looked this engaged with a partner since Trinidad Sevillano left: intense and impulsive, he devours Ribeiro with his eyes whenever they're together. Ribeiro is an extraordinarily young, spontaneous Juliet -- she seems to do everything without a second thought. From the moment she sees Romeo she's transformed; even when she can't look at him, you know what she's thinking, and their furtive attempts to bid goodbye to each other as she's hustled from the ball are heartbreaking. Their balcony pas de deux transports, under a friendly Heaven, conjure children playing in the fields of the Lord: Adam and Eve in the Garden.

Friday's Romeo, Laszlo Berdo, looked a bit generic at first, without Armand's passion. But his courtly manner stood him in good stead when Romeo tries to make peace with Tybalt, and once Berdo got to shake out his hair, he went after Tybalt with a fury. The new look carried over to the aubade pas de deux, where he seemed to shed his inhibitions with his shirt. Jennifer Gelfand made a creditable Juliet in the last two productions (1989 and 1993, with Karl Condon), but nothing like what she does here. To her usual speed and technique she's added focus (she never takes her eyes off Berdo), physical extension (you can almost hear her stretch), and emotional weight (few stage Juliets are this good). There's no posing for the audience; everything is acted -- even the way she awakes in the tomb is authentic. Her Juliet is a touch older and more self-aware than Ribeiro's, yet she flings herself into the aubade pas de deux with total abandon. This is easily the best performance I've seen her give.

Devon Carney partnered Dierdre Myles (who's now the company's ballet mistress) in the four Choo San Goh productions, and their pairing was one of the company's best. Saturday he appeared with Larissa Ponomarenko, and it's not a match made in Heaven -- at least not yet. His Romeo is American, her Juliet is continental. He reads Fenimore Cooper, she reads Tolstoy. Carney is unfailingly attentive, and he makes Ponomarenko look good, but like Berdo he suffers from a touch of Bland Prince Syndrome (a malady common to ballet's male romantic leads). The teasing way Ponomarenko's Juliet invites Tybalt to dance with her suggests Carney -- whose credits include superb renditions of Rothbart and Carabosse -- could complement her by letting Romeo's dark side come out (as he does when he goes after Tybalt). Ponomarenko offers us an older, more sophisticated Juliet who's more attached to her parents but just as determined. It's not instant rapture in the garden -- there's some skittishness before she and Carney build the scene to the parting kiss. With the Friar she can't sit still, she keeps popping off the stool to see what he's mixing; in the tomb she goes all out to find some poison on Romeo's lips. Her phrasing is, as always, exquisite.

Robert Wallace's rubber-legged Mercutio mixes Byron and Bugs Bunny and all but steals the show: he's witty, outrageous, and completely without fear. Never has a ballet Mercutio looked so Shakespearean -- he even incorporates aspects of the Bard's fools. The larger, slower Viktor Plotnikov seems a Mercutio mismatch, but he creates an equally valid character, more one of the boys, a frustrated romantic hero who conceals his longing by making jokes. Nadia Thompson's splendid Lady Capulet is angularly imperious and aristocratic; Jennifer Glaze, who at first seemed less distinctive, is softer-edged but slinkier in dealing with her husband and Tybalt. Reagan Messer and Yuri Yanowsky are less demonic than past Tybalts (Christopher Aponte and Simon Dow come to mind). Both are fine; Yanowsky seems almost vulnerable. Sasha Dmochowski's affectionate Nurse allows herself to dodder here and there but comes through for Juliet when it counts; Nadia Thompson is a shade more reserved but no less endearing. Arthur Leeth's authoritarian Lord Capulet will send shivers up your spine -- it's hard to imagine anyone else in this part.

A few doubts arise in the third act. The stormy outburst of music that precedes Juliet's decision to seek help from Friar Laurence surely calls for something more exalted than her staring out the window (Choo San Goh did no better with this section). Only the Nurse discovers Juliet "dead"; her parents and Paris aren't allowed to express their grief. I miss the moment that Myles created back in 1993 when, finding that Romeo had drunk all the poison, she spiked the bottle off the tomb floor in anger and disgust. Also gone is Juliet's impassioned refusal to leave with Friar Laurence, and the final return of the chastened families. I understand why: the lovers now have the Tomb Scene all to themselves. But Shakespeare's endings are all about community.

No matter -- Boston Ballet now has one of the world's best productions of Romeo and Juliet, with choreography to match its sumptuous sets and costumes. Vaës's invisible equestrian might just peer round that column to have a look.

Jeffrey Gantz can be reached at jgantz[a]phx.com.

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