Romeo + Juliet review: Matthew Bourne brings a searing contemporary ballet to Los Angeles

There are certain rituals by which Angelenos can mark the passing of time in our season-less landscape. One that is tried and true is the return of Matthew Bourne and his New Adventures company to the Ahmanson and Center Theatre Group, a relationship now surpassing a quarter of a century.

This time, the English ballet company brings the North American premiere of their re-imagining of Romeo + Juliet, set to the music of Prokofiev’s ballet. Bourne reimagines the classic tragedy as a tale set in the near future at the Verona Institute, a cross between a British boarding school and a mental institution (though some may astutely ask, what's the difference?).

Instead of Montagues and Capulets, the students/inmates are divided by gender into boys and girls and policed by cruel nurses and guards, who prohibit any affection between their charges. Tybalt (Adam Galbraith) is now a guard who sexually abuses Juliet (Monique Jonas). Romeo (Paris Fitzpatrick) is the son of Senator Montague (Alan Vincent), admitted to the Institute by his parents.

Bourne takes the timeless tale of star-crossed lovers and turns it into a parable of mental health and sexual abuse. It’s a harrowing, decidedly modern take on the story, and one of the more interesting Shakespeare reinventions in recent memory. Often, the Bard’s plays are shoehorned into a new time and place with little regard for coherent dramaturgy. But here, unfettered by language and able to tell his tale simply through the expressiveness of dance, Bourne crafts a searing update.

Lez Brotherston’s set is a sterile crescent of white subway tile, a looming and ascetic canvas for the explosive, colorful passions that erupt upon it. Brotherston also designed the costumes, dressing the teenagers in all-white uniforms that highlight the colorlessness of the world to which they are consigned. Paule Constable’s lighting design only enhances the eeriness and evocative nature of these choices, using light and shadow to give this world depth and dimension.

One might imagine such stark design choices, combined with the lack of dialogue, to have a distancing effect. But Bourne’s choreography and direction allows the visceral emotions of the teens at the heart of the story to color in the world in shades of vibrant, passionate red. And it makes their potent use of stage blood all the more horrifying.

Both Fitzpatrick and Jonas, who alternate in their roles with two others each, are luminous as the title characters. They layer trauma and distress into every turn of their foot or arch of their arm, underscoring the complicated circumstances under which their young love blossoms. Juliet is already traumatized and abused when she meets Romeo, but he offers her a gentleness and affection that is foreign to her.

The dance that takes the place of the balcony scene, as they fall headfirst into love, is bursting with lust and giddy discovery. They kiss. While their bodies roll and move through their choreography, they refuse to stop, creating a human bond between them that they will not sever. It’s beautiful and playful all at once, conveying the heady, all-consuming nature of young love and utilizing the language of dance to express that concept in unique ways.

Cameron Flynn is also a standout as Mercutio, a laddish schoolboy who is as in love with Benvolio (Euan Garrett) as he is with frat-boy worthy mischief. Mercutio, a bit unhinged but utterly lovable, can prove the most challenging role in the story, but Flynn gives him an impish, lovably boyish core beneath his penchant for troublemaking. His dance style has a more grounded, powerful flair that underscores his mercurial, threatening nature in contrast to the lilting moves of the more sensitive Romeo.

While there are many ways to interpret the young love and rash actions of the title characters, framing their choices around mental health is a stroke of genius. Shakespeare himself, in As You Like It, called love merely a madness. In Bourne’s production, love is both salvation and destruction. One can better understand Juliet’s choices in the context of her abuse, and Bourne makes the inspired choice to transpose Tybalt’s death into an act of violence by both Romeo and Juliet and their peers. This spurs them on to their tragic ending, one in which their mutual deaths are the direct result of trauma and PTSD, rather than romantic desperation.

This is certainly a less romantic take, but it’s a sobering, impactful one that comments on the collateral damage of abuse and the consequences of a world that chooses cruelty and conformity over free expression. It’s a potent warning, the 21st-century answer to West Side Story, extrapolating beyond gang wars to a fascist, dystopian state that seems to be hurtling toward us ever faster. In Bourne’s expressive, inventive hands, there is no sweet sorrow, only the reminder that there never was a tale of more woe. Grade: A-

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