Romeo and Juliet

Synopsis

The story of frustrated young (illegally young in modern terms) love and death and the vendetta between two families in a tight-knit Italian community. One of Shakespeare's most popular and enduring dramas it has also been re-done as film, ballet, musical (most notably "West Side Story") and ice spectacular!

Our Review:

7 June 2002

In fair Verona - and not so fair (actually rather torrential on the postponed press night) Regents Park - the New Shakespeare Company lay their scene. The story of the star-crossed lovers - where the ill-fated children of two warring families, the Montagues and the Capulets, fall in love and come to a tragic end - is surely one of the bard's best known.

This Romeo and Juliet find their Verona updated to 1950s Italy, like a Fellini film but one steeped in Catholic iconography, from crucifixes and rosary beads to the walls of Francis O'Connor's grey, deathly set which is embellished with plaques and flowers in remembrance of the dead. With this religiosity the backdrop for the Capulet's lively festivities (full of finger clicking good tunes by Terry Davies and Lisa Kent's lively Latino choreography) and some distinctly unholy behaviour (brawls, bawdiness and murder), director Dominic Hill neatly encompasses a world of contradictions and extremes.

The company work impr...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com - 30 August 2002:

I came away from this production feeling no sense of emotional involvement with the play at all. And when you dont get emotionally involved with Romeo and Juliet, there's summat badly wrong!...

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