Compelling tale of youthful passion

ROMEO AND JULIET

(Lowry, Salford, to Saturday)

ONE thing that always comes across in productions of Birmingham Royal Ballet’s sumptuous and utterly compelling version of Kenneth MacMilllan’s great dance work, is the way the company always manages to find perfect dancers for the leading roles.


It’s not as easy as it might seem to find a leading man who can portray the youthful exuberance of a mid-teenager one minute and someone’s husband the next.

The task for the female lead is even harder: the ballerina must convince as a 13 (or so) year old and later exhibit the sensual longing of a rapidly-maturing young woman.

Beguiling

In both cases on this visit, BRB manages to hit the centre circle — and even better, has found dancers who are not only very, very good individually, but become so much more when dancing together.

Ballerina Mimoko Hirata is a simply wonderful Juliet.

Small, slight and quite fragile, she dances with tremendous poise and has the best pointe work I think I have ever seen: totally confident whether walking or balancing, alone or held by partner Joseph Caley as Romeo.

Their partnership is so beguiling and powerful you want it to return quickly when either is off stage.

Allied to Prokofiev’s extraordinarily lyrical and beautiful score, the effect is overwhelming — especially in MacMillan’s supremely romantic pas de deux on the lovers’ first night together, and later the tragic beauty of the distraught Romeo’s dance with the “lifeless” body of his new wife.

The production takes us from the excitement and passion of young love at first sight to the sadness of seeing it snuffed out so finally.

As usual BRB’s production is an object lesson in how to do this work well: richly set and costumed, not to mention beautifully played by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, MacMillan’s masterwork has been brought to Manchester three times in the past decade, and never better than this time.