![\"Wade](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CTC-L-ENT-CAPULETS-BALLET-01.jpg\")
Wade Schaaf’s world premiere of \u201cThe Capulets\u201d by the Chicago Repertory Ballet at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. (Jorge Sigler)<\/p>\nWhen William Shakespeare wrote his tale of star-crossed lovers \u2014 one a Montague, the other a Capulet \u2014 he didn\u2019t say much about what everybody else in fair Verona was up to. That\u2019s where Chicago Repertory Ballet comes in. The company\u2019s newest production, an evening called \u201cThe Capulets\u201d running two weekends in the Gold Coast, extrapolates \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d with a vividly imaginative story centering on Juliet\u2019s mom.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not Wade Schaaf\u2019s first flirtation with the Bard. The 13-year-old company\u2019s artistic director produced a balletic version of \u201cMacbeth\u201d almost a decade ago. But \u201cThe Capulets\u201d is playing a whole different ball game: Schaaf wrote the libretto, in which Lady Capulet (elegantly danced by Miriam-Rose LeDuc) gets romantically involved with Tybalt after finding out her husband (Rosario Guillen) is sleeping with another man (Paris, danced by Skyler Newcom).<\/p>\n
To this, Chicago Repertory Ballet adds immersive projections (John Probojewski and Zach Minnich with technical support from Liviu Pasare), complementary lighting by David Goodman-Edberg, costumes by resident designer Nathan Rohrer and the cherry on top: original music by Chicago-based composer Matty Mattsson. \u201cThe Capulets\u201d looks and feels expensive. I\u2019m sure it is, but that\u2019s not quite the point. For this critic, who has watched this company grow into a teenager, \u201cThe Capulets\u201d is its first serious, all-in investment in its ambitious vision for Chicago dance. The hypothesis? That the city can support and sustain more than one professional ballet company.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Capulets\u201d isn\u2019t conventionally Shakespearean in its aesthetic, though there\u2019s ample sword play and occasional step-touch court dancing. Shakespeare wasn\u2019t shy about injecting a tragedy with moments of levity, which Schaaf picks up on and best exploits with a corps of what appear to be dancing coats of armor donning Geordi La Forge-styled shimmery visors. They pose, audibly ooh-ing and ah-ing at LeDuc and Jackson Ferreira (who gives a strong performance as Tybalt) as they make out in Tybalt\u2019s armory surrounded by swords and knives \u2014 as you do.<\/p>\n
By the end of the night, I wished there had been even more of these tongue-in-cheek moments, like when Mattsson, whose synthesized score (his first for dance) doesn\u2019t really start cooking until Act 2, dips in and out of themes borrowed from Igor Prokofiev\u2019s 1935 score for \u201cRomeo and Juliet.\u201d This is incredibly satisfying for those who can pick up on it \u2014 and creates familiar rhythmic structures for Schaaf to follow. Like the music, the world built by this spectacular creative team isn\u2019t entirely era-specific. Rohrer only hints at Elizabethan garb, adorning each character with subtle clues about which characters are married and which ones are lovers (these aren\u2019t mutually exclusive). The projections, which take full advantage of the Ruth Page Center\u2019s architectural eccentricities, are similarly ambiguous, feeling not fully real or entrenched in a particular time. That\u2019s not a bad thing \u2014 it makes for smoother transitions with the projections pause from placemaking (animated drone shots of a fictional Verona, for example, or situating us among those knives and swords in the armory) to explore a more abstract world. A black ink blot bleeds all around when Romeo kills Tybalt, for example (remember that?). And animated text hints at certain plot points, a touch that saturates the visual experience and isn\u2019t, perhaps, totally necessary.<\/p>\n
Wade Schaaf’s world premiere of \u201cThe Capulets\u201d by the Chicago Repertory Ballet at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. (Jorge Sigler)<\/p>\n
As for the dancing, Schaaf\u2019s lineage as both a classical and contemporary dancer, most prominently with Thodos Dance Chicago in the aughts, is fully realized in this ballet\u2019s vocabulary \u2014 maybe better than any other recent example. Even better, the dancers, a like-minded mix of classical and contemporary specialists, are capable of seamless code-switching between floor work and pointe work, and between the serious and silly.<\/p>\n
Not content with letting a tragedy be tragic, \u201cThe Capulets\u2019\u201d only forced error is the epilogue, which moves the plot 10 years forward to a country estate where children dressed in all-white frocks dance and play together. It\u2019s adorable. But the story ends with the family living happily ever after, Lord Capulet apparently without his boyfriend and raising his wife and Tybalt\u2019s love child (that also happened). Each family is different, I guess. I hope they\u2019re happy. And in therapy.<\/p>\n
Lauren Warnecke is a freelance critic.<\/p>\n
Review: \u201cThe Capulets\u201d (3 stars)<\/strong><\/p>\n When: Through Nov. 16<\/p>\n Where: Chicago Repertory Ballet at Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn St.<\/p>\n Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes with an intermission<\/p>\n