REVIEW: 5 ***** Romeo & Juliet, Northern Ballet at Royal Shakespeare Theatre, until 28th September
You know how Quentin Tarantino caused a bit of a stir when he got naughty with the narrative, having Hitler assassinated in Inglorious Basterds and Sharon Tate survive the Manson Family to groovily party on in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, historical fact sacrificed in the name of high entertainment? Well, imagine the kerfuffle back in 1935, when Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev accepted an official Soviet commission to create a ballet version of The Tragedy Of Romeo And Juliet, and then opted to give it a happy ending!
Crazy, right? Yup, darn crazy. But completely true. In Prokofiev’s version Friar Laurence stymies the double suicide and robs us of our sob-worthy ending by explaining to Romeo that Juliet has not taken a deadly poisonous potion but merely a sleeping draft, Romeo hangs around for Juliet to wake up and the two lovers literally dance off into eternal happiness. What the heck? Had one of the world’s most revered composers suddenly taken leave of his senses? Certainly, comrade Stalin seemed to think so. Mindful of the political tensions in Europe leading up to WW2 he was keen to keep in with us Brits and didn’t consider mucking about with our greatest ever writer exactly the best way to do it. Hence, he put an immediate stop to the happy-ending nonsense, forbidding the ballet to be performed until it realigned itself with the sombre Shakespeare original.
What on earth had gotten into the esteemed composer to play so fast and loose with the Bard? “Well," he declared, “living people can dance, the dead cannot.” Sergei Radlov, the director who was working with him on the project, clarified further, claiming the story is, “about the struggle for the right to love by young, strong, and progressive people battling against feudal traditions and feudal outlooks on marriage and family.” There’s also the fact that Prokofiev was a Christian Scientist, a religious sect that doesn’t believe death actually exists, so he saw Romeo and Juliet’s love as infinite, continuing forever and ever in paradise.
