'Romeo and Juliet' at the Royal Opera House

Last week I went to see 'Romeo and Juliet' at the Royal Opera House, the ballet that made me fall in love with the art form and, luckily, the dancer who played Romeo in that production six years ago was dancing again. Steven McRae danced Romeo in 2015 and I was in the audience when he snapped an Achilles tendon in 2019 so I had to be there to see his triumphant return to the stage last week, once again dancing Romeo, with Sarah Lamb as Juliet. What a privilege to see this joyous ballet with such great and graceful dancers as my re-introduction to the main stage of the Royal Opera House. The Royal Ballet dance Kenneth MacMillan's version of this eternal story - I've also seen John Cranko's version in Boston and, more recently, Matthew Bourne's re-imagining of the tale, but I prefer the Royal Ballet. Prokofiev was having a good month when he wrote the score for this ballet. 

We all know the story behind the work, the rivalry between the two houses of Capulet and Montague in Verona, how Romeo falls for Juliet and pursues her to marry secretly while she is supposed to marry another nobleman. She feigns suicide to avoid the marriage but Romeo believes she is dead so commits suicide himself and when she finds him dead she follows him into death. Whenever we get to the marriage scene I can't help but wish they don't marry since marriage signs their death warrants, but they always do. Maybe one day the friar will refuse to marry them...

Needless to say, I loved it. It was great to see the excitement of the sword-fencing scenes again, see the Happy Strumpets strut their stuff and see Romeo and his mates enjoying themselves before tragedy strikes. There were a few tense moments when Steven McRae took off to fly across the stage but he was on top form and seemed to revel in performing again. It's what he does, after all. He received huge cheers when he strode on stage at the start of the performance and an even louder ovation at the end, with Sarah Lamb pushing him forward for bows at the end and to accept the cheers and love from the audience. The bows at the end are usually led by the ballerina but that night it was all for Steven, and rightly so. 

And I still love that ballet.

'Poussin and the Dance' at the National Gallery

There's a small exhibition at the National Gallery at the moment about Poussin's dance paintings in the ground floor galleries. I'm not a huge fan of Poussin or that 'French academic' style he inspired but he is a great painter. He left France for Rome in the 1620s and that is where he studied the antiquities there, the statues and other objects, seeing how the artists of the past portrayed movement in stone and that's what he tried to reproduce in these paintings. 

The exhibition probably contains more sketches and drawings than it does paintings, but that's bonus for me. I love seeing great painter's drawings and preliminary sketches, see how they played around with positioning characters in the scenes of the paintings and how they might've changed their minds. I find it all rather fascinating. Poussin seems to have preferred ink for his drawings which gives nice lines and makes them longer lasting. I think my favourite was a study for 'Dance to the Music of Time', a detail from the painting which is the poster for the exhibition.

I admit to not paying much attention to most of the paintings on show - that's pretty, that's colourful - but three paintings that did grab my attention were all painted for Cardinal Richelieu and they were hung together, the 'Triumph of...' Pan, Silenus and Bacchus. Each of them are rather raucous scenes of drunken debauchery as you'd expect from the protagonists. There's a lot going on in these paintings and they're full of movement with lots of dancing, leering, drunken collapses, people loosing their clothes, they're joyous celebrations of life. Look at the detail in the paintings and decide what's happening, like in the 'Triumph of Pan' one man is trying to pull a satyr to his feet after he's drunkenly collapsed - who would put that at the front of a painting? Poussin, obviously.

Apparently, the urn just in front of the pair is a copy of an actual urn that was recently found and was creating a stir in academic circles at the time.

The final painting of the show is 'Dance to the Music of Time' on loan from the Wallace Collection for the first time, and it gets a room to itself. It's a very allegorical painting and is, oddly, quite relaxing. It shows Time playing his lyre and Poverty, Labour, Wealth and Pleasure holding hands and dancing together. Unlike the other paintings, there isn't a crowd around them, just them in a pastoral landscape. Above them in the clouds, we see Apollo and Dawn crossing the sky.

The exhibition was quite busy when I was there so I'll go back again in a few weeks time when it should be calmer. I'd like the opportunity to see the three 'Triumph' paintings again to focus on the detail. 

'L'Heure Exquise' at the Royal Opera House

'L'Heure Exquise' is a work by Maurice Bejart based on Samuel Beckett's 'Happy Days'. In the play, the lead character is buried up to the waist in rubble so in this dance version, she is buried in pointe shoes. The lead was played by the ever-graceful Alessandra Ferri partnered by Carsten Jung. Ferri has a long relationship with the Royal Ballet, training at the Royal Ballet School and joining the company in 1980, achieving the rank of Principal dancer and later becoming Prima Ballerina Assoluta. And she's still dancing. 

The performance was in the Linbury Theatre, much smaller and more intimate than the main stage, and it's great to be so much closer to the dancers. Ferri tells her stories of her past through words, song and, of course, dance. It starts with her buried to her waist in ballet shoes and then the mound of shoes opens up and she steps onto the stage to sift through her memories. One minute she's singing then the next she's riding Jung like a childhood rocking horse. He was a very able partner, morphing into whatever Ferri needed.

The most tense and puzzling section for me was when Ferri discovers a handbag full of memories - a compact, a pair of ballet shoes - that she takes out one by one, and then she pulls out a gun and holds it up in the air. What is that for? Why is it there? What happened in her past to make a handgun such an important memory? Especially when she points it at Jung and he slowly takes it from her. Clearly an important memory and, like the rest of the show, a puzzlement...

For most of the show I had no idea what was going on - just like when I saw the 'Happy Days' play a few years back - so I just let it wash over me. You don't always have to understand everything, sometimes just experiencing it is enough. It's always a delight to see Alessandra Ferri and admire her skill and art and I look forward to the next time.

'Mark Rothko 1968: Clearing Away' at Pace Gallery

A new gallery has recently opened in London and it's opening exhibition is by Mark Rothko, a small series of paintings in acrylic on paper. I've seen a few Rothko paintings over the years at various exhibitions and galleries, including the Tate collection, and they've always been big things but these were pleasantly small and would fit in anyone's living room. That was quite a surprise and joy - I could have one of these in my home.

There's something about Rothko's paintings that I can't quite put a finger on that attract me. I'm sure I read somewhere that they're quite meditative but that's someone else's view and not mine, but they are quite peaceful, quite restful to gaze at. Is it the colour palette, the shape, the size? I don't know, I'm still making up my mind, but I like them. 

There are 22 paintings on display and I probably spent a ridiculous amount of time examining the brush strokes and the colours - is the yellow in tis painting the same as the yellow in that painting on the opposite wall? Is this orange the same or is it slightly more pink? If the curators had spent more time thinking about people like me rather than the overall shape of the exhibition they would've hung some of the paintings side by side so I could examine them properly. Still, can't have it all I suppose.

It may be small but it's perfectly formed. I really enjoyed it and I'm pleased I've seen these rarely exhibited works. It's only on for another couple of weeks so, if you're in the West End, it's well worth visiting - book a slot through the Pace website and see some paintings you'll probably never have the opportunity to see again.

Matthew Bourne's 'The Midnight Bell' at Sadler's Wells

After over a year and a half I ventured back to a theatre to see Matthew Bourne's new dance work, 'The Midnight Bell' at Sadler's Wells. I've not read any of the Patrick Hamilton books this work is based around so I had no idea what to expect but a New Adventures production is always worth a look.

It's a glimpse into the lives of some of the denizens of Soho who frequent the pub, The Midnight Bell. The barmaid loves the barman but he's in love with the local prostitute, their regulars include the spinster and the gigolo, the rich bitch who plays with the madman but isn't really interested in him at all and then we have the gay lovers who happen upon one another in the pub one night. They dance their stories, tales of romance and sex, their hopes and dreams, of cheap hotels and sex in the park, all set in the years between the wars when the world was different but also the same. One of the gay lovers turns out to be a policeman but is this entrapment or something more? You'll have to see it to find the answer to that one.

The characters all seem to have sad little lives, slowly drinking their lives away while their passions boil under the surface but one character does seem to have a happier life. He is the sailor barman who opens the show singing (miming to an old song) of love and we follow his story along with the others and, in the end, he moves on, heading back to sea and more adventures. The rest are still there, drinking in the pub while he escapes. A brief moment of hope amid the smoke-clogged and beer-fumed atmosphere of the pub. 

I think that's what I really liked about this production, all the stories going on at the same time, sometimes literally at the same time in different parts of the stage. Life is a bit grim and dreary in the gloom of a London night with odd street signs providing the light and, of course, we know they've been through one war and are about to head into another one, all a bit sleazy and down at heel but there are moments of hope. Like when the spinster strips the gigolo to his underwear, ties him up and leaves him in the cheap hotel room - she's seen him for what he is at last. And when the sailor heads back to sea with a smile on his face, looking forward to new adventures.

I particularly enjoyed Michela Meazza dancing Miss Roach, the spinster, who I've seen before as the Queen in 'Swan Lake', and Netta Longdon as the rich bitch who ends up... or does she? George Harvey Bone was great as the madman and I really liked Liam Mower as the West End chorus boy. I also really liked Paris Fitzpatrick as the barman who bookends the show as he goes back to sea looking for hope and love. 

I'm very pleased that it was this production that got me back into a theatre after all this pandemic time and, for that, it'll have a special place in my theatrical memories. Thank you Sir Matthew!

'Fragmented Illuminations' at the V&A

There's a delightful small exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum called 'Fragmented Illuminations: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Cutting at the V&A'. The museum has quite a collection of manuscript cuttings which was a bit of a fad for the Victorians, cutting out pretty pictures and framing them or finding other uses for them. The exhibition is only in two rooms, the first looking at the cuttings in the 19th Century and the second exploring the cuttings in their original context.

The first room goes under the title of 'Copyists, Restorers and Forgers' and considers some of the educational uses of the cuttings, such as copies of 15th Century illuminated capital letters published by the Arundel Society (for the promotion of knowledge of art). Much as I liked that room, the next room was better, with medieval and renaissance works on display and this gives a wider view of illuminated manuscripts.

The exhibits were wide ranging from religious works and psalm books to books of hours and legal text books. If there was a book then it deserved to be illuminated in some way, not just religious books. Books were made by hand before printing so all things were possible. It's a small exhibition but well worth seeing if you're going to the V&A.