Romeo & Juliet at the Aotea Centre

By BERNADETTE RAE

The Royal New Zealand Ballet is celebrating its 50 years in fantastic style, with passion and finesse.

Its sparkling new production of Romeo & Juliet celebrates the ultimate love story and the classical ballet technique with a display of explosive, lithe and lyrical excellence that brings tradition and tragedy into the 21st century.

Choreographer Christopher Hampson has pared down the clumsy mime and rhetoric that often bedevils narrative ballets. The action, of which Tracy Grant's artful set is an intrinsic part, tells it all, through gorgeous movement, the music, the subtleties of costume - and without falter.

Highlight follows highlight: a quicksilver Mercutio (Ji Hoon Yeom) taunts Tybalt, a role that sees Graham Fletcher at his best; Sir Jon Trimmer's entrance as Escalus has Godfather status; the procession of participants in the Capulet ball gives a new interpretation to the most dramatic section of Prokofiev's score, contrasting glamour with the rhythm of doom; and the fight scenes are believably ugly, with baseball bats and flashing knives.

There are other, more subtle but important side dramas that give the production substance and depth. Lady Capulet (Pieter Symonds, as she has never looked before) and Tybalt are an early item, which makes his death scene much more than melodramatic.

The peasant wedding, with the action simultaneously taking place in the marketplace and chapel to one side, adds a sophisticated dimension.

Then there is the interplay of light and dark. Grant's set creates two alternate worlds, one black, one white, which revolve cleverly.

There are, of course, the two clans, Capulets and the Montagues, parading in their sharp 50s-flavoured Italian high fashion. There is the intense love and the hate.

Then there are Romeo and Juliet, one minute adolescents, the next thoroughly adult. On Auckland's opening night Jane Turner and Alex Wagner carried the show to perfection. They looked gorgeous. They danced splendidly. They acted amazingly.

Most importantly, we felt every heart-throb every inch of the way.