ROMEO & JULIET (Globe Theatre)****

 

By Louise

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFBWXRqa7Gs

Link to audio-described version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=806Br_XIqAo

Available until: February half-term 2021

This production is an introduction to the play for young people. I might not be the best person to review it because I already know the play, but I am probably the right sort of age.

The play has been cut down to one hour, thirty-seven minutes. I think it works really well. It tells every part of the story which it needs to tell and I didn’t notice anything which was missed out that I thought should have been left in. Director Michael Oakley has set this production in the present day. The language and a lot of the laws and conventions in the play (for example, Juliet is legally allowed to marry at fourteen) stay the same, but the characters wear really nice modern clothes designed by Alex Lowde and look like modern people. It might help people to identify with the characters if they look like us. The production has done really well with emphasising the ways Romeo, Juliet and the other characters aren’t very different from us and feel things like we do.

The acting is really good and I love the way all the characters have been interpreted. Charlotte Beaumont’s Juliet is just like a fourteen year old girl and I love the way she gets a bit stroppy sometimes and screams when she’s happy. I’m quieter than Juliet and not as confident with boys, but I really identify with her. I love the way Ms Beaumont says Shakespeare’s lines too. Cal has seen her in a couple of TV shows and he says she’s really talented and I agree.

I could also imagine meeting a boy like Romeo at my school… it will probably never happen and ideally I’d prefer a boyfriend who didn’t get into so many fights, but I like how Nathan Welsh is quite boyish on the surface and he shows off a little bit, but he’s actually quite caring.

Jeff Alexander is very good as Friar Lawrence. I can see why Romeo and Juliet find him so approachable. Debbie Chazen is really funny as the Nurse and she is really good as Lady Montague too. A lot of the actors play more than one role and I actually didn’t realise because they were so different. Christopher Chung is probably my favourite Paris (I think I’ve seen this play six times) because I felt especially sad for him. Shalisha James-Davis and Ayoola Smart are very convincing as the female Benvolio and Tybalt. It’s a really good cast.

I am a little bit worried though. This production makes changes to the text and to the gender of the characters. There’s no reason why characters like Benvolio and Tybalt shouldn’t be played by women - though if they literally are women, that means Romeo has a fight with a woman and kills her and some people might not like that. Tybalt has proved she is a very good fighter and she has already killed Mercutio, but some people might it’s wrong for Romeo to kill her and I would completely understand if anyone wasn’t happy about this. It also worries me that the murderers are black. I’m sure this wasn’t intentional, but it’s something I can’t help being very aware of.

I think changes would work really well in a conventional production because they would give us a new way of looking at characters a lot of us know well, but this is an introduction for people who don’t know the play and they might be coming away from the play with incorrect impressions about who the characters are and what happens. The changes are very small, but you never know what might stay in people’s minds.