Review: Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet at The Lyceum, Sheffield

But then, when was it ever?

Just as West Side Story (and Gnomeo and Juliet… and zombie movie Warm Bodies…) spun a new take on Shakespeare’s age old tale, so superstar choreographer Matthew Bourne’s interpretation spins the wheel again.

The blood-red rippling curtain falls, the tragic trajectory of the story is the same, but this time the young star-crossed lovers meet not in Italy but in borstal.

Whether it is a prison, or a mental hospital, a secure school or the scene of some awful social experiment isn’t clear.

One thing’s for certain: there’s nothing fair about this Verona.

The authorities in the vaguely futuristic Verona Institute are brutal and bigoted, the segregated surroundings bleak.

The never-changing, sterile scenery – tiled walls, iron rungs that ascend to nowhere, a metal walkway in lieu of Juliet’s balcony – offers little let-up.

It’s claustrophobic, clinical, and without escape – a ‘purgatory, torture, hell itself’ as Shakespeare put it.

Matthew Bourne’s great skill has always been to make ballet accessible to a wide audience, and here he manages it not just with dance but with Shakespeare too, all set to Prokofiev’s stirringly dramatic score.

Juliet is among the damaged young inmates ‘banished from the world’ here, for reasons we do not know.

Where the lack of a backstory limits a little our ability to empathise as much as we might, dancer Monique Jonas’ exquisite artistry makes up for it. Every tortured expression and anguished contortion make plain the wordless powerlessness of her plight.

Teenage Romeo – a suitably preppy Paris Fitzpatrick – does get an explanation for his incarceration. His powerful politician parents want him out of the public eye, embarrassed by his awkwardly strange behaviour.

His businesslike father coldly adds more zeros to the cheque he writes to convince the institute to keep Romeo locked away, his mother crisply taps her cheek for one cold kiss goodbye.

No wonder these two lost souls cling to each other for the affection neither has ever known – and the scene in which they lock lips and tumble together in the longest ever continuous kiss in dance history is among the production’s most memorable.

As in every take on the tale, their love is inevitably doomed. Villainous Tybalt, played with a menacing insanity by Danny Reubens, makes sure of that, the stiflingly institutional hopeless horror of their situation just adding to the heartbreak.

But the whole cast is excellent. It’s hard to keep your eyes off magnetic Eve Ngbokota as Lennox, the first non-binary character portrayed by Bourne’s dance company New Adventures, or Ben Brown as poor brave Mercutio.

When the story ends as it begins – bright red blood shocking against the white of the costumes and the walls – it’s a gruesome conclusion to a harrowingly modern, timeless story.

• Matthew Bourne’s Romeo + Juliet is at The Lyceum, Sheffield, until Saturday, October 7.