omeo and Juliet is the story of a girl and a boy who would rather die than be apart. The play and the ballet must make their love palpable, not just in words or steps but also in the chemistry between the leads. We need to see her budding femininity, and his rousing manhood, and how the lovers luxuriate in each other.

To say this was lacking in Mark Morris’s new version of the ballet is an understatement. His Romeo (David Leventhal) was more interested in Friar Laurence than Juliet (Rita Donahue), while she drifted through a drama she is meant to drive.

If Morris had choreographed to his usual standard, the mismatch would still be hard to fathom but with the sub‑ballet pitter-patter, the wooden swords, the pointless trans-gender casting, and weak acting, the piece disappoints. Combined with Morris’s lack of interest in the central love story, you wonder why he bothered.

The answer is Prokofiev’s original score with arrangements we don’t know. But the happy ending should have deterred a man of Morris’s intelligence. Prokofiev having Romeo and Juliet swan off into the sunset robs the story of its integrity, which is why Shakespeare didn’t write it that way. And no one is above the Bard.
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