4/5

Romeo and Juliet has been a signature work for Northern Ballet for the last 20 years but, while the company has previously toured Christopher Gable and Massimo Moricone’s theatrical version, they’ve returned to Shakespeare’s tragedy with this production by Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Les Ballets de Monte Carlo.

It’s a welcome contrast to much in the company’s programme, in which the dancing is often overshadowed by Lez Brotherson’s ornate set designs.

Minimal and cinematic, this version opens with rolling credits projected onto a screen and continues with a series of mobile white partition walls and minimal props by Ernest Pignon-Ernest.

Thus the attention focuses on the energetic choreography that, in the first act, provides plenty of reminders that the central cast are still teenagers.

Here Juliet (Martha Leebolt) reveals her naked chest to her nurse (Antoinette Brooks-Daw) and Mercutio (Matthew Koon) comically sculpts air models of the female form in front of the love-stuck Romeo (Giuliano Contadini).

It’s an innocence that’s soon lost when Romeo’s friends come into conflict with the black mesh-clad Capulet gang, headed by a suitably bullish Javier Torres as Tybalt.

The lack of props during these street-fighting scenes is successfully navigated, with swords replaced by movement to the metallic clanks in Sergei Prokofiev’s score.

Yet the minimalistic approach poses problems during the closing scenes, where the absence of a dagger both works against dramatic intensity and strains scientific credibility when Juliet strangles herself with a symbolic blood-red scarf.

But if the ending lacks an emotional punch then the rest of the production is strong enough to make this one of Northern Ballet’s best pieces of work for some time.

Runs until March 12, box office: northernballet.com