‘Why don’t you start in the weird position?” suggests director Ed Madden. “That’s a technical term!” he calls across the Royal Ballet’s Opera House studio. “Weird position” may not derive from the classical ballet textbook, but it perfectly suits the making of The Limit – an audacious production that reimagines Sam Steiner’s cult play Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons with some of the Royal Ballet’s boldest artists.
The encounter began with the amiable but ambitious Alexander Campbell, an Australian-born principal with the Royal. “In lockdown, I was thinking about the work I wanted to do,” he says. “I was keen to work with people who inspired me.” He and fellow principal Francesca Hayward considered working with text, and his producer sister Amelia recommended Lemons, which imagines a world giving people a cruelly restricted daily allowance of words, and its impact on a young couple, Bernadette and Oliver. “I read it, then read it again straight away.”
