Yasmine Naghdi’s Juliet pierces the heart as MacMillan’s masterpiece returns

Ballet has to express through movement what it cannot express through words, but when Yasmine Naghdi’s Juliet, on waking up from her drugged sleep to discover the lifeless body of Matthew Ball’s Romeo at her feet, opens her mouth and utters a silent scream, its sound pierces the heart. Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, the choreographer’s most-performed work at The Royal Ballet, is a masterpiece of storytelling. As it clocks up its 537th performance at Covent Garden in its 60th year, Shakespeare’s text is once more eloquently translated into dance.

The principal coaching staff for this revival includes Alessandra Ferri, Leanne Benjamin and Darcey Bussell, all of whom I saw dance the role of Juliet here. What an opportunity for a young dancer! Naghdi’s Juliet has always been affecting – I saw her first dance the role in a 2015 general rehearsal where she was partnered by Matthew Ball, her long-standing Romeo – but she has continued to develop and refine her interpretation.

Her young Juliet is giddy with energy, but uncomprehending when her parents present Count Paris to her, looking nervously towards Kristen McNally’s sympathetic Nurse for reassurance. At the ball, she is immediately smitten with Romeo, revealed in embarrassed half-smiles as she plucks her mandolin to accompany his solo or furtive glances to him across the dance floor. Her “I have a headache” moment to dismiss Paris pressing his suit earns a laugh from the audience.

In the Balcony Scene, the frisson she feels when Romeo, unseen, takes her hand was palpable. Feather light, and with willowy arms, she and Ball hit ecstatic heights, even if MacMillan’s lifts are low, but challenging. In the Bedroom pas de deux, the shyness of the Balcony Scene is gone and Juliet’s desperation becomes frantic, flinging herself around Romeo’s neck, smothering him in kisses as he heads into exile.

In moments of stillness, Naghdi spoke volumes: in the Act 3 Interlude, where Juliet sits on the edge of bed and weighs up what to do next, while the horns blaze their theme passionately, you could see in her eyes the moment where she decides to revisit Friar Laurence. And then, in the tomb, there was that chilling, silent scream. A towering performance.

Ball’s Romeo is less complex. He’s light-hearted and laddish, cheerily giving Claire Calvert’s Harlot a slap across the backside, but partnered sensitively and securely and was suitably dashing in the swashbuckling swordplay that peppers the streets of “fair Verona” (looking fairly brown and orange in Nicholas Georgiadis’ limited colour palette). Leo Dixon’s spritely Benvolio and Joseph Sissens’ happy-go-lucky Mercutio made up a fine trio of Montague lads. Sissens was nigh on perfect, striking the balance between joker and judge in his death throes, casting “a plague on both your houses” with venom.

Ryoichi Hirano’s brooding Tybalt was a touch one-dimensional, always spoiling for a fight, but Elizabeth McGorian made much, as always, of Lady Capulet’s breast-beating grief when Tybalt is slain. A shout-out too for Joonhyuk Jun leading the Mandolin dancers – and lovely, too, to see the four mandolin players perform from the Side Stalls.

Koen Kessels conducted a tidy, well-paced performance, the orchestra not always biting into Prokofiev’s crunching dissonances but the strings playing with satisfying warmth.