Wherefore Art Thou, Radio? Shakespeare via Radiohead Is a Snappy Good Time and Veggetti’s Bacchae Is Powerful
Romeo and Juliet is easy—we know the story, after all. Still, choreographers can’t resist it, and the latest of them—Edward Clug (Romanian), head of Ballet Maribor (Slovenian)—does offer a new slant. First of all, Juliet survives. (Actually, we’ve encountered this approach before, in a spoof in which R. & J. both live on, in nearby Mantua, trapped in a bickering, after-the-bloom-is-off, you-take-out-the-garbage kind of marriage.) The new work—tricked out with handsome Renaissance-y back projections—also pulls a switch musically: not Prokofiev, not Delius, not Tchaikovsky. Instead, we have Radiohead, that portento-pop supergroup—which explains why the name of this ballet is Radio and Juliet. (Among the Radiohead numbers deployed: “Idioteque,” “Like Spinning Plates” and “We Suck Young Blood.”) Read More
