New Adventures and Sadler’s Wells announce casting for Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet which will tour to 13 UK venues including a five-week Summer Season at Sadler’s Wells, ahead of a major international tour next year.
The UK tour will open at Curve, Leicester on Monday 3 July, visiting The Lowry, Salford; Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe and Hull New Theatre, before opening at Sadler’s Wells on 1 August for a five-week Summer Season.
The UK tour continues to Milton Keynes Theatre; The Alhambra, Bradford; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh; King’s Theatre, Glasgow; Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield; Churchill Theatre, Bromley; Wolverhampton Grand Theatre and His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen finishing on 4 November 2023.
International tour dates for 2024 will be announced shortly.
‘Juliet’ will be played by Cordelia Braithwaite. Cordelia created the role in 2019 and was nominated for a National Dance Award for this performance. Monique Jonas, last seen as ‘Sugar’ in the 2021/22 tour of Nutcracker! will be making her debut as Juliet.
Paris Fitzpatrick and Andrew Monaghan both return as ‘Romeo’ having created the role in 2019. Paris and Andrew have just finished critically acclaimed roles in our “Sleeping Beauty” tour. Paris was recognised at the 2020 South Bank Show Awards as “Breakthrough Artist of The Year in Dance” for this performance.
Original cast member, Danny Reubens, returns to his created role as the menacing ‘Tybalt’. New Adventures veteran Richard Winsor, who will be making his debut as ‘Tybalt’ returns to the company having last performed as ‘Luca’ in “The Car Man” at the Royal Albert Hall in 2022.
Completing the company are Tanisha Addicott, Matthew Amos, Carla Contini, Tasha Chu, Adam Davies, Gabrielle de Souza, Jackson Fisch, Anya Ferdinand, Cameron Flynn, Euan Garrett, Kurumi Kamayachi, Hannah Kremer, Rory Macleod, Blue Makwana, Leonardo McCorkindale, Eleanor McGrath, Enrique Ngbokota, Bryony Pennington and Harry Ondrak Wright.
New Adventures senior artists, Daisy May Kemp and Alan Vincent will also feature in the production as well as serving as Resident Directors for the tour.
Matthew Bourne said today: “When our “Romeo and Juliet” was created in 2019, it was primarily as a ‘talent development’ project, offering life-changing opportunities for young dancers and creative artists throughout the UK. As the piece now enters the New Adventures repertoire, I’m excited to say that several of the young performers who were given their first performance experience in this production are now returning to the show as seasoned professionals. I’m also delighted to see many of the phenomenal original cast return, along with some beloved New Adventures legends making their debuts in the production. Our “Romeo and Juliet” was inspired by a desire to listen to and represent young people starting out in their careers as artists, so I’m also thrilled to welcome several very talented recent graduates, making their professional debuts with us, to continue that tradition.”
Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet gives Shakespeare’s timeless story of forbidden love a scintillating injection of raw passion and youthful vitality. Confined against their will by a society that seeks to divide, our two young lovers must follow their hearts as they risk everything to be together. A masterful re-telling of an ageless tale of teenage discovery and the madness of first love, Romeo and Juliet garnered universal critical acclaim when it premiered in 2019, and now joins the New Adventures repertoire alongside the very best of Bourne’s world renowned dance theatre productions.
The 2023 production of Romeo and Juliet is the first Co-Production between New Adventures and Sadler’s Wells. A relationship that dates back 30 years; New Adventures has been performing at Sadler’s Wells since 1993. In 2005 Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Sadler’s Wells, Alistair Spalding, appointed Matthew Bourne as one of the organisation’s first Associate Artists and in 2006 New Adventures became a Resident Company.
Directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, collaborating with the New Adventures Artistic team; Etta Murfitt (Associate Artistic Director), Lez Brotherston (Set and Costume design), Paule Constable (Lighting Design), Paul Groothuis (Sound Design) and Arielle Smith (Associate Choreographer) with Terry Davies’ thrillingly fresh orchestrations of Prokofiev’s dynamic score.
