With its 537th performance by the Royal Ballet, Kenneth MacMillan’s sumptuous Romeo and Juliet is back for its 60th anniversary season. Not much has changed since its premiere in 1965, with a 45-year-old Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, nearly 20 years her junior, as the star cross’d lovers.
Nicholas Georgiadis’s imposing designs, slightly revised in the 2000s, still move the action swiftly from a dusty Veronese square to the bedroom to the tomb – the costumes in dusty oranges, yellows, plum reds providing grandeur and vivid life. And the Royal Ballet company still absolutely understands the work’s heady mix of impassioned naturalism and soaring classicism. Each detail is considered and performed with infinite care to Prokofiev’s racing score.
