SHARON ‘N’ BARRY DO ROMEO & JULIET (Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch)***

 

By Emma

Link: https://www.queens-theatre.co.uk/whats-on/show/sharon-n-barry-do-romeo-and-juliet/

Available until: Livestreams on Zoom at various times every day (excluding Sunday) with the final performance on Sunday 6^th March at 7.30pm. You’ll be automatically muted on Zoom but you can choose to be visible onscreen.

Sharon and Barry are a fictional couple who are in lockdown together. To pass the time they decide to perform Romeo & Juliet on Zoom for their friends. The play really does take place on Zoom. Sharon and Barry play all the roles themselves apart from the Prince, who is played by a girl called Alex (except in the performances where he is played by a boy called Alex but I saw the girl). Sharon and Barry are obviously living together in real life too and they share a screen but Alex has a separate screen. Some characters appear as dummies or cardboard cut-outs but they’re voiced by Sharon and Barry.

They don’t read the full play. There is quite a lot that is skipped over and explained as a narration but I don’t think they cut anything important and everything they did choose to do was great. There is also chatting between scenes while they set up the next scene and this is really funny. Sharon and Barry are great characters and I really like the way they talk to each other. There are a few mishaps as they go through the play and that is fun.

But this isn’t just a comedy about putting on a Shakespeare play. Sharon and Barry are both really good actors and they’re good at performing Shakespeare so you can enjoy it on that level too. Their Romeo & Juliet is funnier than the original but there are some really emotional moments too.

The production is directed by Douglas Rintoul and he has lots of really great ideas of how the different scenes can be set up to keep it different and interesting. I especially liked his idea for the bed. Nicola Thomas is the costume supervisor and I really liked all the costumes used in the play. Some of them aren’t very traditional but they do give you the right idea. Mercutio has a great costume at the masked ball.

Sharon is played by Joanne Seymour and Barry is played by David Nellist. They are both really funny. They make all the conversation between them sound really natural like they’re making it up as they go along (and maybe they are, maybe the script tells them to improvise). Joanne makes Sharon slightly bossy but with a really big heart. David makes Barry into the kind of man who probably needs a bit of bossing around. He takes it all very seriously and that’s sweet. Jessica Rothon does really well with reading the Prince’s lines and she has a lovely crown.

This is probably a great play for people who like Shakespeare but don’t always want to take it completely seriously. (And I don’t think Shakespeare always took it completely seriously himself.)

ROMEO & JULIET (RomeoJuliet2021/Metcalfe Gordon Productions)****

 

By Imogen

Link: https://www.romeojuliet2021.com/tickets

Available until: Performances at 7pm from Monday 16^th-Saturday 27^th February. Matinées on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 2.30pm.

If you’re one of the idiots who thinks musical theatre actors aren’t proper actors, you need to watch this production of Romeo & Juliet. Romeo is played by gorgeous Sam Tutty who was starring in the brilliant new musical Dear Evan Hansen in the West End when our entire industry got shut down.

ROMEO & JULIET (Lamphouse Theatre/Suitcase Shakespeare/Thespie)***

 

By Dave

Link: https://thespie.com/digital/suitcase-shakespeare-romeo-and-juliet-vimeo/2796

Available until:

If anyone tells you Romeo & Juliet is funny, that probably means they’ve seen this production. It’s one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies and whether you’ve read or seen the play or not, most people know that things don’t end well.

Things don’t end well in this production either but there’s still a lot of fun along the way.

60 SECOND SHAKESPEARE (Cream-Faced Loons)****

 

By Arran

Link to The Tempest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n724MPCKnE

Link to Macbeth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvaSW709vtA

Link to Romeo & Juliet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgU1lrKeZy4

Available until: Unknown

60 second Shakespeare is performed by Abey Bradbury and she performs all three of the Shakespeare plays above in about 60 seconds. The videos are a bit longer but if you take out the credits it’s about 60 seconds.

ROMEO & JULIET (Sofa Shakespeare)*****

 

By Megan

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

Available until: Unknown

This is one of my favourite plays even though it is very sad. There are lots of really good performances and ideas that stood out in this production but I noticed two things which I hadn’t really thought about before.

Prince Escalus is a brilliant character. I have always focused more on Romeo, Juliet and the people closer to them but the Sofa Shakespeare actors have made me into a Prince Escalus fan. I like him because he always tries to be fair.

ROMEO & JULIET (Shake-Scene Shakespeare)****

 

By Alan

Link: https://www.patreon.com/shakesceneshakespeare

Available until: Unknown

I think this is the first play Shake-Scene ever did online. They did some work with cue scripts before this but this is their first play. I can’t say it’s their first full play because they didn’t do the whole of Romeo & Juliet but they did the story from beginning to end.

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.

ROMEO & JULIET (Shakespeare Happy Hours)****

 By Cal

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnZ7L3H2LaE

Available until: Indefinitely

I love this play. You can actually get personalised versions from Ustar Novels and my adoptive mum gave me Romeo & Romeo, a gay personalised version about my now-fiancé and me. Our names don’t scan brilliantly, but it’s special to me because I loved seeing our names together like that (the ending wasn’t ideal, but it was a choice of either that or Hamlet) and also, it got me into Shakespeare!