San Diego Reader

They danced Romeo and Juliet at St. Petersberg, 25 years ago: Solange hailed as "the Diva of the Dance"; Andre, the "next Baryshnikov." Applause detonated. Then for no named reason, Andre disappeared. Ruff Yeager's drama begins 25 years later. It's an hour before a press conference. Andre's backstage, in a wheelchair, carving invisible, balletic shapes in the air; Solange enters. She wants to know where he's been and why he left without word. The 75-minute piece unfolds slowly, with lengthy pauses not pregnant enough to qualify as Pinteresque, and the revelations come pretty much as expected. What grabs is the subtext: In effect, for a brief instant, Andre and Solange were Romeo and Juliet. What if they didn't die? What if they parted company for decades, then had a reunion? What has life done to their full bore, star-crossed passion? The performances, by Robin Christ and Yeager, make the bond and the disruption credible, though they could take out some of the air between lines, and could add more variety to deliveries. The script could use reworking, but the effort's worth it, since the play's got good writing, especially Andre's knockout monologue about the dancer's nightmare.