Romeo and Juliet: A Ballet by Cathy Marston

Visceral, poetic, and emotionally raw. Choreographer Cathy Marston reimagines Shakespeare’s celebrated tragedy as a world of radical opposites, where love and death, joy and despair, and tenderness and violence turn on a knife-edge. Set in Verona amidst a bitter feud between the Capulet and Montague families, Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love against all reason. Marston sharpens these classic characters: Benvolio becomes Benvolia, Juliet’s companion Angelica gains a story of her own, and the opposing family worlds clash visually, the Capulets in rigid, angular lines and the Montagues in fluid, circular motion. When Mercutio’s violent death shatters an enchanting stage mirror, its splinters transform into deadly weapons, spiraling the lovers toward catastrophe. Set to Sergei Prokofiev’s fiery, emotionally charged score, this breathtaking ballet is a poignant tale of courage, destiny, and a love destroyed by an unforgiving world.