Pills, Thrills, and Heartbreak

Scottish Ballet’s artistic director Christopher Hampson CBE has long been a champion of storytelling from a completely unique perspective. So too, with These Violent Delights: the first feature-length film from the company, a co-production between Scottish Ballet and Forest Of Black production company, based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Hampson co-directs here with Oscar Sansom.

Performance

Scottish Ballet: “These Violent Delights” directed by Christopher Hampson and Oscar Sansom

Place

Words

Lorna Irvine

Kayla-Maree Tarantolo and Ishan Mahabir-Stokes in “These Violent Delights” directed by Christopher Hampson and Oscar Sansom. Image by Mihaela Bodlovic

The general kernel is present and correct: the Montagues and Capulets are still two warring families, riven apart from an ancient blood feud. But here, the story is essentially from Juliet's perspective. Soloist Kayla-Maree Tarantolo makes for a particularly compelling Juliet, as she acts as well as she dances, with great dignity and passion. She has real fire in her belly.

The introduction to Juliet is a phantasmagoria. She cannot sleep for anxiety: the red satin bedclothes slide away and towards her to mark the contrasts between night and day. Yet this device is also effective in the hallucinatory nature of the film.

Of course, her parents are overbearing. Christopher Akrill’s Lord Capulet is a domineering nobleman, who cannot and will not let her individuate; whereas Lady Capulet (Marge Hendrick) is a classic film noiresque spider lady, trying to ensnare her daughter with clawlike hands—the very embodiment of enmeshment.

Kayla-Maree Tarantolo and Ishan Mahabir-Stokes in “These Violent Delights” directed by Christopher Hampson and Oscar Samson. Image by Mihaela Bodlovic

The choreography is glorious and varied. Julie Cheng; Morgann Runacre-Temple, Myles Thatcher, Sophie Laplane, Nicholas Shoesmith and Andrea Azzari all bring disparate styles of approach to the mix: there's sheer surrealism, with hands grabbing at Juliet as she suffers night terrors; pure classical ballet with a Renaissance colour palette at the outset, and more contemporary styles as the film progresses.

Visuals and music are of course the other key ingredients. Cinematographer David Liddell’s lush visuals integrate seamlessly, from an expressionist opening, to fish eye lens, casting the viewer as voyeur to the ultimate destruction of two young lives. Meanwhile, composer John Lemke creates a modernist soundtrack that incorporates neo-classical, avant-pop and EDM.

Ishan Mahabir-Stokes as Romeo is equal to Juliet in his frustrations and familial limited expectations. His initial solo is a dance of wild pirouettes and thrashing gestures. He seems to sweat teenage angst from his pores.

Harvey Littlefield in “These Violent Delights” directed by Christopher Hampson and Oscar Sansom. Image by Mihaela Bodlovic

With its non-linear approach, startling, sensual and hallucinatory, it's fitting that Romeo and Juliet escape their quotidian rut and, like so many young lovers before them, slope off to the Apothecary nightclub. Pills are swallowed, and the two perform a pas de deux which drips with desire and longing. This is when the film really ignites.

Friar Lawrence, reimagined here as Sister Lawrence, a drag queen, (Harvey Littlefield) introduces proceedings with a nod to queer ballroom. Sister Lawrence is reminiscent of Leigh Bowery, perhaps the most iconic of all club kids, but she and her friends perform waacking and twerking, glides, catwalk sashay and death drops that are more twenty-first-century adjacent. Hands reach for the lasers, Romeo crowdsurfs. All of the euphoria of the dancefloor is represented, but with added poignancy through knowing that two lives will be so cruelly curtailed.

Yet it all ends as it began; Juliet's gulp as she wakes from a pill-induced slumber, ready to receive her awful fate. “These violent delights” murmurs the voiceover of Friar Lawrence's forewarning, “have violent ends. And in their triumph die like fire and powder . . . ”

These Violent Delights will get an official release in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on October 21, 2026.

Lorna Irvine

Based in Glasgow, Lorna was delightfully corrupted by the work of Michael Clark in her early teens, and has never looked back. Passionate about dance, music, and theatre she writes regularly for the List, Across the Arts and Exeunt. She also wrote on dance, drama and whatever particular obsession she had that week for the Shimmy, the Skinny and TLG and has contributed to Mslexia, TYCI and the Vile Blog.

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