Heather Ogden and Ben Rudisin in Romeo and Juliet.Supplied
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- Title: Romeo & Juliet
- Music by: Sergei Prokofiev
- Choreographer: Alexei Ratmansky
- Dancers: Heather Ogden, Ben Rudisin, Guillaume Côté, Sara Mearns
- Company: The National Ballet of Canada
- Venue: Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
- City: Toronto
- Year: 2023
The National Ballet of Canada opened its run of Romeo & Juliet on the weekend in Toronto with two pairs of stellar dancers – the casting circumstances proving just as dramatic as the story.
Thursday’s opening night at the Four Seasons Centre featured principal dancers Heather Ogden and Ben Rudisin, heroically stepping in to replace his offstage partner Harrison James, who bowed out at the last minute because of injury. And on Friday, Ogden’s husband, Guillaume Côté, performed what the company says will be his final round of Romeos after dancing the role for more than two decades.
To find a Juliet equal to Ogden’s calibre (offstage couples often do not partner), the company convinced powerhouse ballerina Sara Mearns, a long-time principal at New York City Ballet, to dance the role for the first time. And while Côté and Ogden are deservedly revered in Canada and beyond, the high-point of this two-week run will undoubtedly be Mearns, a 37-year-old veteran who stuns audiences with her portrayal of the most famous teenage girl in the Western canon.
“Juliet is so much more than an innocent girl,” Mearns wrote on Instagram while rehearsing. “Diving headfirst into what my Juliet will be, it’s … exhilarating.”
Exhilarating indeed. Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky’s Romeo & Juliet, created in 2011 for National Ballet, was already regarded as one of the best in the world, milking the drama in every note of Sergei Prokofiev’s 1935 score, while simultaneously allowing for more character development than some productions of Shakespeare’s play.
Both Ogden and Mearns keenly traced Juliet’s psychological arc; Ogden slightly more delicate and deliberate, Mearns more following a groundswell of emotions. Like school girls at a sleepover, the story begins with Juliet and her nurse giggling about love and marriage. Her parents have selected a suitor, Paris, seen onstage wearing very silly hats. When he gets a bit too handsy with the courtly foreplay at a ball, Juliet attempts to flee, and runs smack dab into Romeo.
In the arms of this masked man, Juliet doesn’t just discover young love – she discovers she loves to dance. Ogden emphasized this transition a bit more, becoming more technically proficient, while Mearns was more radiant. Even once Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt (an excellent, furious Josh Hall in the second cast), discovers the masked interloper is a Montague and kicks him out, Mearns keeps dancing like Juliet’s life has completely changed, and maybe hers has, too.
Mearns has been a principal at New York City Ballet since 2008, where she’s been especially praised for her performances in short, abstract works by Ratmansky. More than any other principal, she’s sought opportunities to perform elsewhere, including collaborations with Twyla Tharp, the Merce Cunningham Trust and Matthew Bourne, the English choreographer who made her the star of The Red Shoes when the classic film adaptation came to Manhattan.
“The conquering blonde who leaps tall buildings in a single bound,” Vanity Fair has called her.
In late 2021, Mearns suddenly stopped posting and performing. She surfaced a few months later to say she’d been diagnosed with extreme burnout and depression. Those who had come to love Mearns for wholeheartedly pursuing side projects – including me – understood any comeback might include fewer thrilling guest appearances.
Thank God she did return, most recently in City Ballet’s spring season, before taking leave from the company to give her all in National Ballet’s Romeo & Juliet.
In the balcony scene, Côté and Mearns wore their hearts on his giant puffed sleeves. Mearns is quick and powerful; she spins faster than anyone else in the business, and Côté kept up, until they collapsed together onto the floor. That spill was choreographed, yet everyone in the hall shared the exhilaration of both the dancers and their much-younger characters. Their post-coital bedroom duet was equally vigorous; the parting was such sweet sorrow that Mearns tore her gown.
Despite passion of these pas de deux, Juliet’s strongest scenes come once her parents show up to insist she marry Paris. Ratmansky makes it abundantly clear that Juliet not only plots her escape for love but because she wants agency. Lady Capulet (Stephanie Hutchison) wanders over to Juliet’s unmade bed and pauses, as if she can smell sex. Mother and daughter make eye contact over a major chord. The gig is up, and in the pas de trios that follow, Ogden gave us a Juliet who was righteously angry: angry at her father, angry at fate and angry at society that could dictate every step of a Renaissance woman’s life.
If Mearns was slightly messier in the same scene, it didn’t matter because she was equally convincing, more defiant and a bit less calculating. When either Juliet swallows the potion that should allow her to awake in Romeo’s arms, the most magical thing in the whole ballet happens, which is that audiences feel suspense – a hope that, just maybe, this star-crossed story could come round right.
Because so much has gone right. The orchestra sounded fabulous, especially in the oompahs of the low brass. Across the board, the company’s dancers and character artists distinguished themselves, from the quartet of leaping harlequins to the dashing men who played Romeo’s friends.
Alas, the curtain still falls on a tragic tableau, as it has for 400 years. For there was never before a story told so well, two nights in row, then that of these two Juliets and their Romeos.
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)