rubyslipper

This is a superb production, thanks to Kenneth Macmillan's choreography, first performed in the 1960s with the peerless pairing of Nureyev and Fonteyn. The "beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear" of this Royal Ballet performance is Alessandra Ferri's Juliet. She looks lighter than air, and her astonishing technique is matched by her acting skills; she is both gawky and elegant, sometimes from one moment to the next. How does dance reflect Shakespeare's verse, letting movement replace the spoken word? Surprisingly clearly; Romeo and Juliet's mirrored dance steps take the place of the sonnet they compose together, and the ease and grace with which Juliet dances with Romeo, contrasted with the stilted formality of her dance with Paris, says it all. And Romeo's dance with Juliet's inert body is both macabre and unbearably poignant. Prokofiev's music is a star, too. The screechy violins express the barely-concealed violence of the Capulet-Montague brawl, and the dissonant chords break into even the lovers' tender pas de deux. I wish this production were available on video or DVD; my taped-from-cable copy is dying.

Rupert Everett has the aquiline profile and world-weary vocal delivery that are necessities for a screen Holmes, but he (and the excellent actors around him) are hamstrung by a cliché- ridden script. Sherlock Holmes, telling Watson to "keep your breath to cool your porridge"?? The last two times I heard that expression on screen were both in adaptations of Pride and Prejudice--and I certainly mean no disrespect to either of them. Holmes is also made to deploy a Mary Poppins aphorism about pie crusts and promises--perhaps you remember it from your childhood Disney viewing.

This is a good-looking production (apart from the occasional wobble from the annoyingly popular unsteadicam), though I have it on good authority that London fog did not swirl rapidly around the lampposts and chimneypots. Beautifully designed interiors include a Duchess' drawing room, a Victorian graveyard, an underground lair of the villain (he always has a lair, doesn't he), and a ceramic-tiled morgue. Costumes are in a muted color palette of cream, black, olive green, and brown, and the girls in their costumes for a classical tableau look as if they have stepped out of a Alma-Tadema painting.

In addition to Everett as Holmes, the production is graced with a uniformly strong cast. Ian Hart brings an acerbic vigor to the role of Dr. Watson, and Neil Dudgeon injects Lestrade with some humor. The superb Helen McCrory, as Watson's American fiancée, initially appears brash and pushy (she calls Holmes "Sherlock" throughout, even though his best friend Watson invariably calls him by his last name), an often-observed trait of American women in British film/TV productions, but she is too good an actress to keep to that one-note character. Guy Henry is disgracefully underused--give him a bigger role!

The story is a new one, which is not in itself a criticism; it is creepy and intriguing. The most glaring problem of the show is with the script; I hope that director Simon Cellan Jones continues to make more Holmes stories--but that writer Allan Cubitt will not.