DANCE REVIEW : Festival Ballet Brings Ashton ‘Romeo’ to Met

There are “Romeos” and there are “Romeos.”

When it comes to Prokofiev’s epochal ballet about Shakespeare’s star-cross’d lovers, numerous images spring to mind. For some it must be the ageless Galina Ulanova floating with innocent passion through an ornate facsimile of Leonid Lavrovsky’s original Bolshoi production--an achievement happily preserved on film.

Others recall the romantic turbulence of John Cranko’s version, as enacted first by the Stuttgart Ballet and later by the Joffrey. Or the richly detailed cinematic melodrama that Kenneth MacMillan concocted for the Royal Ballet and subsequently revised for American Ballet Theatre.

The first “Romeo and Juliet” to be ventured by a Western company, however, was Frederick Ashton’s setting for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1955. Much admired and yet quickly forgotten--don’t ask why--it remained a staple of the Copenhagen repertory for only a decade. Los Angeles saw it at Shrine Auditorium in 1965.

Many authorities--including Ashton himself--feared this “Romeo” was lost. Memories blurred with time, records proved faulty, notation dubious.

In 1985, however, Peter Schaufuss rallied the reluctant choreographer, then 81, and some eager survivors of the original cast (most notably Niels Bjorn Larsen) for a historic exhumation on behalf of the London Festival Ballet. New York got to see the result Tuesday when the Festival Ballet--soon to be renamed the English National Ballet--returned after a 10-year absence to open a two-week engagement at the Metropolitan Opera House.

The result was, in many ways, a revelation. Ashton always was a man of taste, restraint and precision. Luckily, he also was something of a poet.

Unlike his illustrious successors, he felt no need to treat “Romeo” as a sprawling epic. He saw no need for verismo indulgences, for lusty harlot trios, vegetable fights, prancing clowns or vast courtly maneuvers.

He preferred to focus on the plight of the central characters, stressing lyricism over drama, intimacy over spectacle, abstraction over literalism. Most important, he preferred to stress dance over surface theatricality.

He compressed the action boldly, and apparently had no qualms about cutting bits and pieces from the magnificent score. Compared to Cranko and MacMillan, Ashton may seem a bit cool, cautious and polite. That, however, makes his interpretation no less poignant. On the contrary. . . .

This “Romeo” savors the virtue of intimacy, even in a 4,000-seat house, and cherishes the order of classicism. The London production, with its stylized designs by Peter Rice, honors the lofty Copenhagen model.

In the cool, hard light of 1989, the episodic structure may seem a bit dated. Still, one can find timeless eloquence in the fluidity of the love duets, the intricacy of the duels, the athleticism of the playful trios alloted the young Montagues and the simplicity of the three tragic encounters in the Capulets’ tomb.

Although the Festival Ballet does not command the luxurious resources of its more famous British counterpart, it serves Ashton with reverence, authority and obvious conviction. At 40, Schaufuss is a manly rather than boyish Romeo, but his noble ardor remains undiminished. Susan Hogard, his exquisite 21-year-old Juliet, embodies vulnerable purity.

The nicely poised, not very British supporting cast is dominated by Maximiliano Guerra as a splendidly dapper Mercutio and Nicholas Johnson as an appropriately sardonic Tybalt. Matz Skoog (Benvolio) and Patrick Armand (Paris) look like incipient Romeos.

Lynn Seymour, MacMillan’s most feverish Juliet, has come out of quasi-retirement to vitalize the reasonable agonies of Lady Capulet. She is paired with an elegant Lord who happens to be an old chum from the Royal Ballet, Alexander Grant. Freya Dominic bumbles sweetly as the Nurse

The only weak link in the performance Tuesday involved the wayward playing of an obviously under-rehearsed pit band. Under the circumstances, one didn’t want to blame--or assess--the conductor, Graham Bond.

The audience at the Royal Gala Performance included Princess Margaret, who is about to yield her position as official patron of the struggling, peripatetic company to the Princess of Wales.

It is worth noting that, according to press materials distributed at the performance, the latter has “spoken of her desire to write and choreograph her own ballet.” It is a bracing prospect.