Romeo and Juliet presented by The Joffrey Ballet at Auditorium Theatre

Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended

"...Coercion and volition play crucial roles in the choreography, highlighting the difference between making war and making love. Even before the Romeo blow-up, Capulet's controlling ways clearly alienate his wife and daughter, who pull out of his grasp or shove him off. Romeo and Juliet's first duet echoes that dynamic: she often slips out of his embrace — not being coy but re-enacting and revising her relationship with her father and training her lover to ask, not command. Free will lies at the heart of love."

Stage and Cinema - Recommended

"...Scott Speck superbly directs the wonderful Chicago Philharmonic, the score retaining its sumptuous, sometimes scary orchestrations. But Pastor’s dance creation plays interesting tricks, like giving Friar Lawrence (handsome Lucas Segovia) a lovely, late-blooming pas de deux with Juliet before she accepts his poisonous solution. The street fights carry the usual contagious violence, but here too elderly onlookers at the back give the brawls a very public perspective. The action, especially in the second half, feels quicker, with the lovers’ separation barely palpable before their ill-timed, death-soaked reunion. The ensemble movements are suitably swift and cutting, lurching and twisting like the music from rhapsodic leaps to deadly close quarters."