Birmingham Hippodrome
October 15, 2021
Indie rock and ballet. In Birmingham. Who would have guessed it? And it was absolutely riveting.
Created in 2005, Edward Clug’s Radio and Juliet, the second half of Birmingham Royal Ballet’s R&J Reimagined programme, comes in just before Shakespeare’s tragic Romeo and Juliet runs its course. The walls of the Hippodrome seemed to close in as, to music from Radiohead’s sad ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’, a sombre, black and white film leads us through the door of a sparsely furnished villa, up the stairs to a white bedroom where we find a young woman on a mattress, eyes open, staring. She looks dead. But she’s not. It’s Juliet, who, having decided not to take her own life, is struggling with her loss and trying to come to terms with events.
In front of the transfixing images, six men, identically dressed in formal suits but without shirts, enter one at a time. When the projection ends, we shift into flashback, retracing the couple’s fateful journey. However, although the basic outline of Shakespeare’s play is there, I’m not sure you would immediately associate the ballet with it if it wasn’t for the title.
Clug’s stripped back ballet is undoubtedly cool, sleekly modern and incredibly elegant, though. The choreography is detailed and requires razor sharpness, which it got in spades, the cast of seven uniformly terrific, with the brilliant Yaoqian Shang as Juliet quite outstanding.

Photo Bill Cooper
An opening solo for her is mechanical, matching perfectly the robotic voice from the band’s OK Computer album. Thereafter, the jarring, angular articulations and isolations combine with more flowing moments.
Led by Tyrone Singleton, the six men are largely interchangeable symbols of the male characters in the story. Whether dancing or walking on and off, they move rapidly as if driven by an invisible force. Their dance is very powerful, macho, and full of energy. Their suit jackets sweep beautifully through the space as they twist and turn. Their limbs strike out like daggers cutting the air sharply. Their precision and synchronisation was quite superb.
The highlight of the evening was Shang’s duet with Singleton (who quickly gravitates to being the main Romeo), set to the maudlin and mournful ‘How to Disappear Completely’, which predicts perfectly the doomed nature of their relationship. It starts tentatively before blossoming into full blown passion, their bodies entwining stylishly and sophisticatedly.
The male duets and ensemble sections that follow are powerful and sometimes coldly violent. After what is clearly a reference to Tybalt killing Mercutio, the other men done white gloves before picking up the latter by his suit and carting him off like a piece of trash (think Mafia hit squad!).
Elsewhere, what is presumably the Capulet ball is danced in surgical face masks, similarly worn by the ‘priest’. The sleeping potion becomes a lemon, providing a splash of colour and absurdity.
Much has been made of Clug’s use of Radiohead’s music. Often haunting, it is certainly compelling, at different times screaming tension, loss and sorrow, although it is mostly there for atmosphere. So much so, that the lyrics almost become unimportant, even though they do sometimes allude to the scene playing out. A fast-moving duet between Brandon Lawrence and Max Maslen (which I read as Tybalt and Mercutio) is danced to ‘The Gloaming’ and its hints at imminent darkness and ending. Mercutio then dies to ‘Bulletproof… I Wish I Was’.
It ends with a flashback of Romeo’s death. He carrying her, then she carrying him. And another visit to that villa, the camera retracing its steps before the door closes on the memories within.
Opening the double header, Rosie Kay relocates Shakespeare’s story to modern day Birmingham in her Romeo + Juliet, replacing the feuding Montagues and Capulets with urban gang conflict between the multi-ethnic Ms and Cs. Performed by her own Rosie Kay Dance Company, the conventional but hard-hitting retelling takes a while to warm up but then becomes quite absorbing.

Photo Brian Slater
Kay has described the piece as her “love letter to Birmingham.” It certainly reflects the diversity of the city. The dancers themselves come from a wide range of backgrounds, while the easy-going contemporary choreography is infused with dashes of street and Indian classical dance.
That diversity of the cast helps Kay sidestep any issues of racial background regarding her two gangs (which only became frequent in adaptations after West Side Story first appeared). By doing so, she’s then able to focus more on the effects of peer pressure, knife crime and drug abuse. They also dress similarly, colourful street clothes being the order of the day all round. That likeness of dress does cause some confusion initially, especially in the opening face-off.
That opening set to, like the others, feels very real, as does a gang initiation ceremony. The street party-cum-rave (read Capulet ball), is full of dynamism and energy but it’s in the following duet for Romeo and Juliet that the work really gets going.
Subhash Viman Gorania (very much the star of the piece) and Mayowa Ogunnaike convince completely as the star-crossed lovers. Both dance with a coltish, youthful freedom, their two very different movement vocabularies slowly coming together.
Drawing on his Indian classical background, Gorania is all fleeting, seamless movement, swift yet graceful turns that speak loudly of desire. He has wonderful clarity of movement. The detail in his hands is remarkable. Ogunnaike is more angular, punchier but also more impish. At first, their dance is uncertain. They mirror, question and respond playfully, before coming together in a beautifully free-flowing outpouring of hearts and minds. As impressive and realistic as it is, it does feel very long, however.
It doesn’t last, of course. Events rapidly spiral out of control as a clash between Ty and Merc ends up with the latter stabbed, followed quickly by Romeo’s fatal fight with Ty. But the biggest jolt comes with the sight of Juliet in a very modern-day body bag, accompanied by a police radio report of a suicide, after she had drugged herself to mimic death using a pill supplied by her confidante, Angel, crafted beautifully by Iona McGuire.

with David Devyne (Ty), Mayowa Ogunnaike (Juliet) and Deepraj Singh (Merc)
Photo Brian Slater
In fact, all the characterisations are impressive. Elsewhere, David Devyne gives Ty just the right touch of arrogance, while Deepraj Singh is slef-assured and slightly cocky as his opposite number Merc, whose death scene following his stabbing nods neatly to the ballet versions.
It’s all set to a fusion of Birmingham-based composer Annie Mahtani’s electro-acoustic music and Berlioz’ Roméo et Juliette (played live by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia). The latter is perhaps a little too lush at times, although it does work especially well in that central duet.
Louis Price’s set is minimalist construction of scaffolding-like towers decorated with what appear to be satellite dishes evoke a modern tower-block jungle. I’m less sure about the two-layered backdrop of gold banners that simultaneously look like stylised bunting and a portcullis.
It ends quietly, Kay following Shakespeare in concluding with a coming together, flowers tied to a railing providing a very modern memorial to the deaths we have witnessed.
Carlos Curates: R&J Reimagined is at the Birmingham Hippodrome to October 16, 2021. Visit www.birminghamhippodrome.com for tickets and details.