Remotegoat.co.uk
By Andrea West, 13th September 2008
What do you lose by presenting Romeo and Juliet as enacted by four
public-school pupils in the 1950s, overnight, in the school chapel?
Well, a lot of the verse, for a start, and many of the characters:
this adaptation pares the play down to the bone, and keeps us strongly
focussed on the story at the expense of many well-loved lines. We do
get Queen Mab, and Mercutio's dying curses, but we don't hear about
the nurse's daughter Susan, who is now with God, and apart from
Juliet's mother all the authority figures are suggested rather than
shown.
What do you gain? Enormous physical energy and inventiveness: the
chance for four very talented young actors to show their skills: and
the same-sex love scenes add a surprisingly apt resonance to the idea
of a forbidden alliance.
This production will make you think, and I for one will remember it
for a long time. The alienation (the school setting, the reading from
a single textbook) distances one slightly from the pathos: I didn't
need the tissue which is usually essential for the closing scene. But
I was very happy to join the mainly teenage South Hill Park audience
(some of whom had been audibly embarrassed by the love scenes) in
whooping and cheering at the end. You wouldn't want this to be the
only Romeo and Juliet you ever see, but you certainly won't regret
spending an evening with it.
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