Juliet and Her Romeo

Rudolf Nureyev’s new Romeo and Juliet—choreographed for the London Festival Ballet last year, and brought to the States this summer—has provoked an unusual degree of interest, especially for a ballet by someone who is not primarily a choreographer. Not that there had been any shortage of ballets to the Prokofiev score, but none of them was precisely about Romeo and Juliet—Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Now, that does not make them bad ballets (some of them are, but for other reasons; whereas Kenneth MacMillan’s, for example, is sublime). Nonetheless, it would be a special kind of triumph if Shakespeare could be translated into another medium with the characters and relationships intact, and with no more lost than when he is translated into another language.

When the first reports of Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet reached us from London, it sounded as if he had done just that—as if he had, essentially, used the MacMillan version as a base (as MacMillan and Cranko used the Lavrovsky as a base), and re-Shake-speareanized it. Now that the London Festival has brought it to this country, it turns out that the reports were half right.

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

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Rudolf Nureyev’s new Romeo and Juliet—choreographed for the London Festival Ballet last year, and brought to the States this summer—has provoked an unusual degree of interest, especially for a ballet by someone who is not primarily a choreographer. Not that there had been any shortage of ballets to the Prokofiev score, but none of them was precisely about Romeo and Juliet—Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Now, that does not make them bad ballets (some of them are, but for other reasons; whereas Kenneth MacMillan’s, for example, is sublime). Nonetheless, it would be a special kind of triumph if Shakespeare could be translated into another medium with the characters and relationships intact, and with no more lost than when he is translated into another language.

When the first reports of Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet reached us from London, it sounded as if he had done just that—as if he had, essentially, used the MacMillan version as a base (as MacMillan and Cranko used the Lavrovsky as a base), and re-Shake-speareanized it. Now that the London Festival has brought it to this country, it turns out that the reports were half right.