The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui @ Nottingham Playhouse

Despite the all-too-well-known sticky end the lovers come to in Shakespeare’s original, Renegade Theatre’s take on ‘Romeo and Juliet’ left us dancing in our seats and shouting for more in an encore that lasted 15 minutes. We’d just been treated to an hour and 20 minutes of muscle-rippling breaking and stunt-dance, with minimal depressing death, some body-popping and, unexpectedly, a lot of German!

Physically challenging and emotionally brave, Broken Chords tells a universal story of heartbreak and suffering. Through an amalgamation of contemporary and classical dance, the performance creates an intimate study of the types of personal relationships that mould our lives. The piece is seemingly dark, yet moments of extreme humour are sporadically injected, generating a sense of hope for those despairing times when everything in life seems too much.

I confess, my heart sank just a little as the corpse-esque woman marched on stage on her stilts, positioning herself beside a woman (actually a man) sporting a pink satin number with Joan Crawford’s voice eerily emerging from her (his) lips. It was a bizarre start to a performance which I ultimately (and surprisingly) found to be energetic, innovative and highly impressive.

East meets West in this tale of passion and betrayal, performed by the Northern Ballet Theatre with gusto, flair and wrenching emotion.