by Leigh Witchel
Kaloyan Boyadjiev’s goal in making a new Romeo and Juliet for Norwegian National Ballet was to make a version that could last for several decades. It looked as if his template for that kind of Romeo was a version that has lasted several decades – Kenneth MacMillan’s.
According to an interview, Boyadjiev had wanted to do the ballet for more than a decade, and also did a version in his native Bulgaria two years ago. This current staging premiered in June, and was mounted again to begin the Oslo season. In the two casts I saw, there were a few surprises, but no New Yorker would feel bewildered by this production, or even unfamiliar with it.
The version Boyadjiev danced most often (both Mercutio and Romeo) was staged for NNB in 1992 by Michael Corder. It doesn’t matter if Boyadjiev has seen the MacMillan production or not. One of the things most pervasive about the main western versions (MacMillan’s and John Cranko’s) is that they have details that have seeped into so many other versions.
One interesting difference showed up immediately, and it was visual. Christopher Oram’s scrim to open didn’t hearken back to the Italian renaissance, but to earlier times, with a trompe l’oeil of Roman arcades. Layered one above another, the association went from viaducts to mausoleums, so both striking and smart.
Boyadjiev showed us both Juliet and Romeo on opposite sides of the stage, mooning, before the scrim rose. Unlike the scrim, the set was recognizably in period with atmospheric golden sidelighting by Neil Austin. Like MacMillan, Boyadjiev opened with Romeo’s encounter with Rosaline, who carried a rose that she dropped for Romeo with a loud plastic clunk. On the second night, Freya Murzagaliyev-Thomas was able to make the role work with a sense of enjoyment and humor at the flirtation.
The townswomen were on pointe, scurrying and sweeping, giving way to a trio of wholesomely-dressed whores. They may not have been whores, as they were listed in the program only as 3 Montague Women, but they did grope Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio.
The street scenes always feel like something stagers grit their teeth and push through (as Arlene Croce observed, Prokofiev seemed to write tarantellas by the yard.) These felt dutiful and not fully realized; the loss of character shoes and vocabulary made them more pallid. In both casts during the crowd scenes, there were a lot of people making gestures without meaning, the kind of port de bras the ensemble does when it doesn’t know what to do. The dancers hadn’t filled in the blanks yet. Oram dressed the Montagues in blue, the Capulets in orange. In the opening, they danced separately, and in the Act 1 brawl they divided clearly. But in the second act they danced together. Was there a ceasefire?
Tybalt and Romeo erupted into a duel that felt almost like habitual play-fighting – another Tuesday in Verona. The second-night Tybalt, Ricardo Castellanos, brought clear characterization. With gelled hair, almost like an amateur Errol Flynn, he swashbuckled, getting off on the conflict.
When the music changed, the women catfought (shades of Monty Python’s Batley Townswomen’s Guild), and on the music, the men started again. Boyadjiev departed from convention when Friar Laurence raced out ineffectually for a moment, but also the sword fight was in unison. This was less lively than the usual chaos, but it turned the fighting into a choreographic statement.
Boyadjiev held to a familiar outline, Lords Montague and Capulet with broad swords, Escalus walking in purposefully, like a man accustomed to mediating brawls. He listened skeptically and imposed a truce. And the crowd immediately tried to fight again once Escalus left, prevented only by his guards – a brief reminder of the futility of an enforced peace coming from without.
The most work Boyadjiev said he did was in the mise-en-scène, and it showed. The ballet had a drive to explain itself – not always necessary when you’re dealing with a story almost everyone in the audience knows. After the brawl, Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio stole an invitation to the Capulet ball at sword point. That worked best the second night when the messenger, Yevhenii Ohanian, made it his moment, not wanting to get killed over an invitation. Another instance came at the ball, where Juliet’s six friends were greeted by Tybalt. Teenage girls arriving unescorted? That wasn’t needed and didn’t make sense.
On to Juliet’s bedchamber, where both Anaïs Touret and Julie Petanova donned the nightie and followed successfully in the footsteps of Juliets past. The most striking moment in the scene was the casting of Paris, particularly Simon McNally on the first night. McNally had beautiful line and was punctilious in echoing Touret’s poses, but he was too perfect, too handsome and elegant, stuffed into purple mutton chop sleeves and a cape. It became his character and a signal that he wasn’t the right man.
As Lady Capulet on the second night entered Juliet’s chamber like a frigid bitch and Richard Suttie played her husband as the opposite: warm and affectionate. Boyadjiev made a slight tweak at the end of the scene, which worked. Instead of the Nurse pointing out Juliet’s puberty and breasts (that MacMillan moment has not aged well), she clued Juliet in that this meeting was a betrothal and Juliet will be marrying Paris.
Outside the Capulet mansion, Rosaline showed up and clunked another rose at Romeo’s feet before entering the ball with Tybalt. Both his sidekicks chided Romeo for being lovesick and the Queen Mab trio was taken at a clip, on the second night at too fast a tempo by conductor Vello Pähn for Romeo (Dingkai Bai) to complete his lines.
The Capulet Ball was grave, tilted and swayed, right in line with MacMillan – and Prokofiev. Boyadjiev didn’t see the lovers meeting as a coup de foudre. Romeo noticed Juliet before she noticed him, they noticed one another when they crossed. It seemed less thunderstruck and more innocent curiosity – who was that?
Through the ball Boyadjiev hewed close to a familiar path, leaving the dancers to make individual marks: Vasilii Tkachenko as the second night Mercutio gleefully pissing off Tybalt in his solo, or Giuseppe Ventura as his Benvolio nailing several tricky jumps in his solo. Suttie earned the Victor Barbee award for making a supporting character compelling, cutting Tybalt off when Tybalt apprehended Romeo, saying that this was his house. Samantha Lynch’s Nurse from that cast didn’t play the end; she was excited by the intrigue of Juliet finding an illicit passion. A moment not from Shakespeare that is now almost standard in Romeo and Juliet as a ballet: Castellanos gave Storm-Jensen an illicit kiss on the hand. A Tybalt/Lady Capulet affair was accepted as canon, and also barely explored.
Oram’s set had one questionable choice: there were no stairs from the balcony, which may be architecturally more authentic, but meant that Juliet had to disappear to come down and reenter. Next time, don’t spend money on giving the sentries torches with flames. Build some stairs.
Besides the awkward reentry, the balcony duet hit the marks and rounded the bases, at a quick tempo as if done in a single breath. There seemed to be less overhead work, which made it more achievable. On the first night Touret and Alex Cuadros Joglar were a wholesome couple, more human than exquisite. Joglar danced cleanly, with fine elevation. In the duet, he threw himself into tour jetés and back bends, and Touret charged through a short solo. Their partnering work was deft, and their final kiss wasn’t a little peck, but a snog. Bai and Petanova took a similar attack, he threw his head back, and himself into the duet, both whirred at high speed through the partnering. What seemed missing was an arc. Boyadjiev’s timing in the first short duet at the ball seemed to work, even if the couple was doing overhead presses early, it seemed right. This duet led to a kiss, but how?
As Act 2 opened, you could see Boyadjiev in conversation with the repertory. The street scene fleetingly quoted Giselle’s kissing game. You could sense MacMillan in the skipping that went round and round itself. Romeo entered mooning, Benvolio and Mercutio entered drunk. Romeo rejected both his favorite of the three women and Rosaline, who seemed to show up just to be rejected.
Not having a big duet, Act 2 tends to drag and Boyadjiev focused on small details, getting bogged down in the plot. Prokofiev inserted music twice in the second act, usually used as processions. Boyadjiev made the procession religious celebrating the Virgin, with Friar Laurence and four children dressed with wings of stray feathers. Like the unison swordfight, the added details worked when they showed up not explanations, but part of the design. The little angels returned to weave into a forecurtain crossing. But did we need a forecurtain cross of Tybalt looking for Romeo? No, we didn’t.
Blessedly, Boyadjiev didn’t have the Nurse goosed in the letter scene. She took Romeo to Friar Laurence; Juliet showed up on her own. Lynch’s approach to the Nurse was always refreshing and positive – she found everything, including sneaking her mistress’s boyfriend to be secretly married – an exciting adventure.
Speaking of acting positively, what is to be done about Romeo before Tybalt and Mercutio’s duel? This isn’t just in this production, Romeo’s mooncalf approach to preventing the duel never works. Isn’t there a more stageworthy way to have him try to stop a fight? Not the milquetoast attempts at touching shoulders and shaking hands, but could he be looking for a way to get Tybalt or Mercutio to put away their sword?
The blocking of the duel varied slightly night to night, but the second night cast made several good choices. Castellanos acted as if he had not expected to kill Tkachenko, even if that was his intention. He stayed well away from him as he died, only batting Mercutio’s sword out of his hand when he came at him. Die already. As he expired, Tkachenko cursed both men as usual, but also heaven before he went.
Both Joglar and Bai fought Tybalt in crazed grief. Romeo was sloppy and blinded by hysteria, chopping the sword at Tybalt with both hands, only to have Tybalt knock his sword out of his hands three times. Romeo getting the upper hand and landing a fatal blow felt like luck.
Castellanos dove round the stage, trying to attack Romeo before kicking the bucket (the fault is Prokofiev’s but it’s a long death. Die already.) Storm-Jensen knew this was her moment and she took it, screaming and attacking Bai.
The Act 3 bedroom pas de deux built logically from the Act 1 balcony duet. The lower lifts in the earlier dance now felt as if he held back there to do more elevated, overhead steps here. Things got showier, including a nifty lift that popped, then flipped. Both couples pulled all of it off without a hitch. For Touret and Joglar, as well as Petanova and Bai, the coaching felt consistent – there wasn’t that much daylight between these casts.
Storm-Jensen entered stricken and joyless. (But why wasn’t Lady Capulet in mourning? She couldn’t throw a black veil on?). Boyadjiev staged the family confrontation as violent (Lady Capulet backhanded Juliet) and Storm-Jensen’s trauma helped the scene to work. Lady Capulet brought in Juliet’s wedding dress and she needed this wedding to happen. Put on the goddamn dress, Juliet.
When Boyadjiev approached the ballet dramatically, he tended to miss – over or under-explaining. When he let the dancers do the explaining and approached things choreographically, he hit the target. Here, he staged a tableau, with Lady Capulet and the Nurse under the side arches and Juliet in the center. The three arches of the bedroom set were echoed in the placement. Emotional moments that combined with compositional moments had the most impact.
Once Juliet was alone, Boyadjiev teased us with Juliet sitting at the edge of the bed in the MacMillan pose, but she didn’t stay there as the music churned. Instead, she moved almost immediately to the Ulanova run – only with her coat rather than a scarf. As decently done as this was – it felt very in-house. It was all the best bits of other people’s work. And Boyadjiev’s own touch was to interrupt Juliet’s flight with an awkward stage crossing for two washerwomen. That could have worked if he had truly pushed it to a level of irony, but it was forgotten as quickly as it was brought up, and ended up just Not MacMillan nor Lavrovsky.
More dramatic questions. When Juliet returned after visiting Friar Laurence, her parents and Paris were waiting for her. Did it make sense to have them know she left the house? It was the dancers who could make sense of it. The first night Lord Capulet, Linus Lynch, made the ambivalence interesting. In a staging where the parents’ cruelty had to be explained as part of their distress, he was angry, but he would not hit Juliet. He was trying to control her and not lose his temper. He guided her back to Paris in a way that was quite forceful and just on the other side of abuse. The touch was still gentle but the lack of options was clear.
McNally and Touret did the MacMillan lifts where she was pressed straight up without helping – Natalia Makarova’s specialty. Then Touret did the usual rippling bourrées back. Petanova’s were more quick, tight taqueté. Petanova was a little more rebellious with Paris and father, pushing Paris away, refusing to be kissed on the hand. Suttie took her gently – but not gently – by the wrist one more time and led her to Paris. She assented. Barely. At this point Paris just wanted a wife who didn’t hate him.
They all left, which – if you know that Juliet has already left the house once because you saw her come back, seemed like a serious tactical error. At least both Touret and Petanova went all out, as Juliets do. It’s her act and if it felt like a mosaic of fanservice, Boyadjiev inserted all her touchstones – the swoons, the runs, the pleading. Both women took them.
The next big departure was the tomb scene. In an explanatory detail that really did work, Juliet was brought to the tomb in her wedding dress. Paris was not there. It’s OK for a production to choose not to have Romeo murder Paris, and it was imperative here.
Romeo’s obligatory dead body duet with Juliet followed. With her feet exquisitely pointed. Juliet had her big moment; Romeo got his. Both men gave it their all, screaming in despair, pressing her overhead. One good detail from Bai – he smiled after drinking his poison as if thinking “I’ll be joining her.”
After Romeo swallowed poison, Boyadjiev pulled a Ratmansky. Juliet woke up before Romeo died. In Alexei Ratmansky’s 2011 production at the National Ballet of Canada, Romeo saw Juliet stir, but Juliet did not see Romeo. Here, Romeo embraced and kissed her, but there was no time for more. After stabbing herself decisively to join her husband, Petanova cradled his body in a moment of stillness and momentary peace.
Yes, this version was derivative. At least Boyadjiev worked from good models. Both casts committed and it still was effective. What this production offered was a solid, well-constructed ballet, good opportunities for the dancers, and high-quality designs. What it didn’t fully answer, even with all the plot tweaks: Why not just get the MacMillan? Not every in-house production needs to answer that question, but this one would go up a notch if it did.
copyright ©2026 by Leigh Witchel
Romeo and Juliet – Norwegian National Ballet
Oslo Opera House, Oslo
September 2-3, 2026
Cover: Norwegian National Ballet in Romeo and Juliet. Photo credit © Erik Berg.
Got something to say about this? Sound off here
[Don’t miss a thing! We’ll send you a notification of every article we post if you sign up with your email. (The signup is right below, scroll down). We promise you won’t be deluged and we won’t spam you either.]
