ALAS, poor Juliet. Matthew Bourne, Britain’s most successful choreographer, is to give Romeo a male lover in a gay version of the romantic tragedy.

Bourne, whose all-male Swan Lake has enthralled audiences for more than a decade, is again using an all-male cast for Romeo, Romeo — his version of Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet, based on the Shakespeare play.

For Bourne, 47, the challenge is to portray a convincing gay relationship in dance. He said last week: “It’s more to do with dancing than with sexuality. A male dancer, whether he’s gay or straight, fits into a relationship with a female partner very happily.

“Getting away from that, making a convincing love duet, a romantic, sexual duet, for two men that is comfortable to do and comfortable to watch — I don’t know if you can. I’ve never seen it done.”

Bourne’s Swan Lake, in which all the swans and cygnets are male, was first staged at Sadler’s Wells theatre in London in 1995, and became the longest-running ballet in London’s West End and on Broadway. But although it was critically celebrated, Bourne has long had concerns that it was short of being a true homosexual work of art, since many of the performers were not playing people.

He said: “I have a way of approaching it so as to make it — I hate to say ‘acceptable’, it’s a terrible thing to say — but so that people don’t run screaming from the theatre. I let them find their own way with it, take it as far as they want in their own heads.” While a gay interpretation of Romeo and Juliet has the potential to be more provocative, critics have often pointed to homosexual undertones in Shakespeare’s work. Many of his sonnets were addressed to a young man, and there has also been speculation about the sexuality of the lead male characters in Romeo and Juliet, particularly Mercutio, Romeo’s best friend, and Benvolio, his cousin.

Bourne plans to improvise movements and scenes for Romeo, Romeo with small groups of dancers later this summer. If successful, rehearsals with the whole company could begin next year.

Since West Side Story translated Romeo and Juliet to the gang warfare of 1950s New York City, the play has often been reinterpreted. In 1996, Baz Luhrmann, the director, cast Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the title roles, retaining the poetry, but updating the story to replace rapiers with pistols.

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