Peter Schaufuss presents Frederick Ashton’s Romeo and Juliet

Peter Schaufuss has just presented a chamber version of Frederick Ashton’s 1955 Romeo and Juliet at the Edinburgh Fringe…

Detail from Poster/Flyer for the Ashton ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Saint Stephen’s Theatre, Edinburgh. Click through to see the full flyer.

Peter Schaufuss Company
Frederick Ashton’s Romeo and Juliet
★★✰✰✰
Edinburgh, Saint Stephen’s Theatre
15 August 2025, matinee
www.edfringe.com

The Frederick Ashton Romeo and Juliet seems a perpetual curiosity of a ballet. Every few years it pops up again, some nice observations are made, but there are always ‘buts’ about it. First created for Royal Danish Ballet in 1955 as an original response to the Shakespeare story and Prokofiev score, as a narrative work it’s largely been outdone by subsequent productions, particularly the well-known ones by Kenneth MacMillan, John Cranko and Rudolf Nureyev.

I first saw the Ashton version back in the 1980s when Peter Schaufuss, then director of English National Ballet¹, resurrected, with Ashton’s collaboration, what was effectively a lost work. It was early in my dance-going life, but I remember not being very impressed by the storytelling, but most of all by the laughter at the end as the Prince of Verona came out for a bow in a costume that was about 10 sizes too big for him and had dogged him at every appearance. Not sure who the Prince was, but he may have been a stand-in, and he saw the funny side in the situation too, and held his hands up in surrender as if to say, ‘What’s a dancer to do, faced with such a recalcitrant costume?’ Not much of a recollection really, given the seriousness and reverence in which Ashton is held by some fans, but I’m afraid it’s what sticks in my mind.

When Ashton died, Schaufuss inherited the ballet and decided to put it on as a chamber piece for his own relatively small company. If you want to know more of the general history of the work and Peter Schaufuss’s long family involvement in it, you should read this piece by Carrie Seidman in the Herald-Tribune, published earlier this year as pre-publicity for Sarasota Ballet taking the Ashton Romeo into its repertoire.

In London, the cut-down version was last shown in 2011 on the huge stage of the Coliseum, where the very un-Ashtonian Natalia Osipova and her then partner in life, Ivan Vasiliev, were the lovers. They were a mega-star pairing at the time, having earlier wowed audiences in classical performances by the Bolshoi and Mikhailovsky Ballet. The reviews were for the most part OK — the dancers were something of a qualified hit, the production not so much (1, 2, 3). But certainly, nobody had a good old go at it, and Jeffery Taylor (RIP), a long-time fan of Peter Schaufuss’s work as I recall, gave it 5 stars — a star rating still used in publicity today.

The performances in Edinburgh were a little strange in that the advertising did not really highlight it as a dance show, something that only became apparent to some in the queue to get into the venue. There was some pre-run publicity mainly featuring the news that Schaufuss’s daughter, Tara, would be dancing Juliet (alas not at my performance) and it would feature a company of international dancers. Strangely, there were no press tickets available, and so I’ve not seen any reviews of the show by the abundance of pro-writers in Edinburgh for the Festival. With tickets around £20, it was a good price, and seating in the Ashton Hall at Saint Stephen’s Theatre (a former Church of Scotland church, now owned by Schaufuss) is comfortable, with good sightlines and everybody close to the action. Less good was the noisy thrust stage. I’d estimate capacity as around 200 seats, and it was about a quarter full for the matinee.

The show runs to two hours with one interval and uses ten dancers, some with multiple roles. No cast sheet or programme was available, but prior to the start, the list of roles and dancers was projected onto the stage floor for us all to see. For reference, here is the list, lightly annotated by me.

Romeo: Samuel Gest - made up to Soloist in Sarasota Ballet this year
Mercutio: Aaron Lund
Benvolio: Luke Wragg
Livia (Mercutio’s girlfriend) / Juliet’s Nurse: Lydia Rose - dancer with London City Ballet
Paris / Prince of Verona: Daniel Pratt - former First Soloist at Sarasota Ballet
Friar Laurence: Peter Schaufuss
Juliet: Sierra Abelardo - Junior Principal at Sarasota
Tybalt: Ricardo Graziano - Principal with Sarasota
Lord Capulet: Peter Brandenhoff
Lady Capulet: Caroline Rees

They were all fine dancers, and there are some strong dance actors in there as well. The strong showing from Sarasota Ballet is understandable — the company danced the Ashton Romeo in March this year, if in larger format, with a corps and scenery. (A review by Marina Harss.)

The Ashton choreography has always been noted as being more lyrical and tending to focus on the lovers than the better-known, large-scale productions with a wider take on Verona and warring families etc. The Prokofiev score has been cut in several places, but we still get something of a street fight early on in proceedings and a Capulet’s Ball, but with so few dancers, it has to be said both feel dramatically hollow and absolutely threadbare visually. Beyond a fine flotilla of candles at the back and sides of the stage, there is little set to speak of, with, memorably, Juliet’s bed/tomb appearing as if a lightweight collapsible table covered by a thin sheet. There are generally fine costumes, largely up to snuff; but the overall feel of this version of Ashton is one handicapped by too few bodies to tell a story with the sweep and majesty of Shakespeare’s plot. You can certainly see why Schaufuss brought in mega-stars when he put it on at the Coliseum — it’s a production that needs such help.

While it can’t compete with the big versions elsewhere, there are gems, and the lyrical movement tag keeps coming to mind in the steps for Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio particularly — their Verona is a far less butch place than that created by MacMillan and Nureyev, for example. Samuel Gest’s Romeo moves with great ease, but his acting was not so convincing, especially against Sierra Abelardo’s Juliet, who was absolutely stunning in weaving technique and storytelling together. In the Balcony Pas de deux (sans a balcony, of course…), the choreography is much more gentle and tentative, but I love the way Ashton has Juliet’s arm often framing and caressing Romeo’s head. There’s much more innocence and tenderness here, and Abelardo brings it all alive. Most touching, and for me, she was the great find in seeing this show.

I also liked Ricardo Graziano’s Tybalt, so full of snarling menace, and Daniel Pratt’s Paris. Not for the first time, it struck me that Juliet was bonkers to reject such a fab beau compared to what Romeo was offering. It was in all these more intimate scenes that this telling felt stronger. Peter Schaufuss’s Friar Laurence was also convincingly weary, though in a weird throwback (for me), his costume was well too long for him, and both he and we were constantly aware of the need to hoick it up each time he needed to move anywhere.

All up, the Edinburgh-told version of Ashton’s Romeo would be interesting to Ashton fans — well, it contains Ashton steps doesn’t it — but you can’t get away from the fact that later ballet versions of Shakespeare’s epic are more successful for a reason — they are dramatically stronger and more impressive. The good thing about the Saint Stephen’s production was its good seat price and seeing the dancers so close too. If you never experienced that, it can be special, especially in intimate scenes. However we are not seeing Ashton’s original version of Romeo and Juliet, but one cut down for way fewer dancers (and without sets), and it’s not so clear that if Ashton had wanted to create a chamber Romeo for ten dancers, he would do it this way². It will be interesting to see if Sarasota Ballet ever brings their fuller version over to the UK at some point. Last summer, Sarasota danced a successful season of Ashton works in the small (Royal Opera House) Linbury Theatre, but Romeo would need a much larger stage and be much more costly to put on, all around…