Many choreographers have created contemporary versions of the Romeo and Juliet story, but few are as up-to-date as Michael Keegan-Dolan's excellent new piece The Flowerbed. Wonderfully danced by his Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, the Montagues and Capulets become the Neighbours from Hell, and sword and poison are replaced by garden shears and amphetamines.
Mr and Mrs D (Mick Dolan and Bernadette Iglich) are meticulously neat and tidy: he obsessive in his love for his manicured lawn, she obsessed with physical fitness and weight reduction. Neither is much impressed by their mooning teenage son Tony (Jarkko Lehmus). The gross V family move in next door, constantly eating, chain-smoking and turning up the volume on the telly, and soon Mr D is depositing his son's litter in their garden and they desecrating his lawn with a flowerbed. Mr V's daughter Mary (Rachel Lopez de la Nieta) is sensitive and nature loving. Soon the two young people are in love and open warfare has broken out between their families.
The fight scenes are acrobatic and inventive, the love scenes lyrical and moving, while other scenes are side-splittingly funny. Rodney Grant's set, costumes, props and effects are all superb, Philip Feeney's music sinister, comic and dramatic as required, while Keegan-Dolan can only be described as a genius for again producing something so brilliant, yet so totally different from his last piece.
Runs until Saturday (9th) at 8pm. Booking 1850-260027.