★★★★☆ Spectacular traditional pageantry with contemporary accents bring alert storytelling to the fore.

State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne
June 29, 2016

2016 marks exactly four-hundred years since the death of the English language’s most hallowed wordsmith, William Shakespeare. In the centuries that have followed, one of the Bard’s narratives, arguably more than any other, has remained indestructibly captivating, and that’s undoubtedly because Romeo and Juliet slips so comfortably into any historical vernacular. Whether it be authentically Elizabethan, or spun-up into a modern day soap opera like Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 gun-toting film adaptation, Shakespeare’s tragic romance is happy either way. Choreographer Stanton Welch has hedged his bets in his new production for Houston Ballet, currently in Melbourne as guests of Australian Ballet. It features all the epic, august grandeur of a traditional period reading, liberally seasoned with plenty of contemporary winks.

It’s a remarkably successful balance that brings the storytelling of this narrative ballet to the fore. Die-hard balletomanes might find Welch’s interpretation a little light on really technically ferocious divertissements, but this production is far more concerned with communicating emotion rather than dazzling with balletic fireworks. Perhaps most importantly, this is a production that Australian...