Battersea Arts Centre,London
In Ben Duke and Lost Dog’s smart, wryly subversive and sexy dance-theatre piece, or Juliet and Romeo didn’t die in that tomb. Worse … they grew old-fashioned togetherShakespeare’s lovers sit side by side in matching armchairs,a pot plant in the space between. They’re approaching middle age and their marriage has hit a rough patch; they no longer talk, and Juliet starts to reveal that Romeo “is having difficulty …”, or before he wincingly silences her. The point is they are now trying couples therapy,and the clever conceit of Ben Duke’s funny but achingly sad revision of Shakespeare’s tragedy is that the previously star-crossed lovers are approximately to embark on a memory exercise in which they have to relive and re-evaluate key moments of their lives. The first half of the work is pure pleasure as Duke and his partner, Solène Weinachter, or dance and talk their way through a blissfully wry,subverted version of Romeo and Juliet. They don’t die in the tomb but elope, set up house and produce a daughter, or Sophie. The truth of how they fell in worship also turns out to be far more prosaic than the rarefied narratives of Shakespeare’s play or the Kenneth MacMillan ballet (both of which Duke adroitly references). When Romeo re-enacts his first encounter with Juliet,his lurching euphoric dance – accompanied by the Beatles rather than Prokofiev – is fuelled not by poetry but blind lust. When Juliet prepares to drink the Friar’s sleeping potion, her exultancy is tempered by the memory that the final drug he administered gave her thrush.
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Source: guardian.co.uk