Romeo & Juliet is Shakespeare with power cuts. The lighting in Jamie Lloyd’s cheerless production keeps shutting down, perhaps deliberately. The show stars Tom Holland (also known as Spider-Man) whose home in Verona resembles a sound studio that’s just been burgled. There’s nothing in it apart from a few microphones on metal stands. He and his mates, all dressed in hoodies and black jeans, deliver their lines without feeling or energy as if recording the text for an audiobook. Some of them appear to misunderstand the verse.
Shakespeare’s most thrilling romance has been turned into a sexless bore
When not muttering their lines they stare accusingly into the middle distance, like catwalk models. Then a power cut strikes. This indicates a swordfight, apparently, and it goes like this. The yelping characters are busy trading insults and daring their opponents to ‘draw’ their swords (even though no one carries a weapon). Then the theatre is plunged into darkness. A tense silence follows. Then the lights spring back on and several of the swordsmen are sporting dollops of jam across their tummies. And they’re screaming like babies. Not convincing.
An overhead screen is used to project chunks of the play that have been pre-recorded in the theatre’s scruffy backstage areas. There’s a speech on a roof, a bit of dialogue in a dingy corridor and a soliloquy up a fire-escape. The director hasn’t bothered to adjust the lighting so these scenes look like raw footage from a war zone. Very lazy. Or very thrifty, perhaps.
No money was spent on sets, props, make-up or wigs. Mercutio, played by Joshua-Alexander Williams, styles his hair in fist-sized bunches that look like Mickey Mouse ears. Michael Balogun (Friar Laurence) is completely bald, which draws attention to the radio mike plastered against his skin. In close-up video shots, a flap of Sellotape is visible dangling from his cheek. Amazingly sloppy work.
The best actor by far is Freema Agyeman who plays the Nurse as a flirtatious cougar, chatting up Romeo and giving his pecks a playful squeeze. Why doesn’t he ditch Juliet and run off with her instead? Evidently he prefers Francesca Amewudah-Rivers whose Juliet is a morose, closed-off creature with a permanent scowl on her face. Not her fault. She’s obeying direction.
To newcomers, this show will look like a cheap crime drama about a weepy thug called Romeo who conceives a bizarre passion for a surly crosspatch called Juliet. There’s no zest, excitement or romantic warmth here. The omission of furniture creates huge problems. We can’t physically see the sumptuous palace where Juliet lives so we can’t grasp what she risks by contracting a forbidden marriage. And her father’s threat to disown her carries no weight if she’s already shacked up with Romeo in his derelict warehouse. It’s an amazing feat. Shakespeare’s most thrilling romance has been turned into a sexless bore.
The main challenge with Richard III is not the king’s disability but the narrative clarity of the text. The play is a lengthy history lesson that takes in battles, marriages, trials, rebellions and executions involving three generations of inter-related dynasties. Only a historical expert can grasp every detail of the plot – and that’s when the show is performed straightforwardly.
The Globe’s female-dominated production stars Michelle Terry, who plays Richard without reference to his physical eccentricities. All the distinctions between male and female characters have been erased so the story is impossible to decipher. It feels like an am-dram show staged for the amusement of boffins at an all-female college.
It feels like an am-dram show staged for the amusement of boffins at an all-female college
The visual aesthetic is deliberately ugly. The Globe’s interior has been covered in chains, ropes and rusty iron grilles, and the rear wall is festooned with scrappy turquoise posters. The stage pillars are caged in wire frames like the piers of a concrete bridge under construction. Designers who dislike the Globe can sheath the décor in plain cloth. No need to dump builder’s clutter all over the place. The costumes are worse: half modern, half medieval. Terry first appears in a Blackadder tunic and a blond wig like Jimmy Savile. Then she dips into her fancy-dress collection. Gold trousers, black trousers, an emerald fur coat, a Calvin Klein gym outfit, three changes of ankle boots, a fake bodybuilder’s torso made of latex. After the coronation, she sports a scarlet MAGA cap. She might have spent less time on costume and more on character.
She begins the play by giggling sadistically at all the courtiers she intends to murder, and she never varies this tone of hectoring triumph. A horrible, gloating Richard. The crowd seemed to enjoy it, although there were clusters of schoolkids fidgeting and chatting throughout. Hardly surprising. To comprehend this show you’d need to spend weeks poring over the text and examining each scene in detail. The actors have done just that, and they’re the only ones qualified to appreciate the result. A theatre that pursues this solipsistic policy will die.
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