Meet the stars who are shaking up Shakespeare

Coming online on Monday, a chunk of my X/Twitter feed was in meltdown – clips from the Broadway revival of Romeo and Juliet, led by Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor, had sparked a frenzy of excitement.

Part of this was actively encouraged by the show, which has an unscripted prologue that essentially is a role-call for the cast: the whoops and cheers that accompany Zegler (who has amassed a big fandom thanks to her roles in West Side Story and The Hunger Games: Songbirds and Snakes) and Connor (Heartstopper heart-throb) create a palpable, electric energy that is infectious even within the pixelated confines of social media.

This is just the latest in a year chock full of fresh, edgy productions of Shakespeare shows. Catching up with the West End Romeo and Juliet star Francesca Amewudah-Rivers last night at The Stage Debut Awards (Amewudah-Rivers being the break-out star of a landmark production), this opportunity to both inject something fresh into these long-known passages was a tantalising part of a huge production – tearing up preconceptions and mining the material for new insights.

Speaking about one of the most famous scenes in the show, the balcony scene, Amewudah-Rivers says: “it’s awkward, it’s exciting, it’s cringey, and it’s sticky. I tried to bring so many moments of truth into nuances of the text. It’s easy to think we have an understanding of what Shakespeare should be, especially when the language can be difficult to get into. But I always try to ground it in reality: I asked myself ‘what is going on right now?’. It’s a little bit funky, a bit will-they-won’t-they – it’s fun, and I tried my best to lean into that.”

One vital part in giving Shakespeare a new lease of life was the reactions of viewers: “The response from the audience after the first performance, and during that performance, that organic energy of exchange – we all understood that this was something worthwhile. Connecting with audience is the main goal, always.”

Another performer, who neighboured Romeo and Juliet on St Martin’s lane earlier this year, was also a West End Debut nominee – Toheeb Jimoh. His Hal in Player Kings was as captivating a presence as co-star Ian McKellen’s Falstaff. He reflected on the experience: “It felt like such a boundless learning opportunity – having six to eight months mining Ian McKellen’s brain for advice, experience, knowledge, friendship – it was awesome. I learnt so much playing every day. It was hard work – six times a week for three hours and 40 minutes. But the reward was seeing so many people coming down and saying ‘I’ve never seen that play before’. There’s something really joyous about being there for someone’s first interaction with a Shakespeare text, or theatre… there were young people who came and visited and told us ‘this is my first experience of Shakespeare, and it doesn’t feel old, or dusty, or weird, or alienating.’ That was awesome.”

Jimoh has a coterie of roles he’d love to play going forwards – Coriolanus or Hamlet (“a few years down the line”) or even switching it up like Adrian Lester when he played Rosalind in As You Like it, in 1991: “maybe there’s a part in Cymbeline for me”.

Next year, of course, we’ve got Bridgerton and Wicked’s Jonathan Bailey tackling another famous Shakespeare character, Hal’s father’s cousin Richard II – in a production under the eye of Shakespeare pro Nick Hytner. Before that, David Tennant and Cush Jumbo will be back in their binaural Macbeth though almost all tickets have already sold out.

With it being such a precarious time for arts in schools, it’s hard to understate how important it is to show the contemporary relevance, the malleability and the vivacity of Shakespeare’s texts to teens and those with a lifetime of arts engagement ahead of them. So many productions this year have told the nation that the arts is where the party really is – and it’s a party that benefits an entire nation.