James Karas
Director Erica Whyman
has staged a youth-oriented and fast-paced if somewhat ill-focused production
of Romeo
and Juliet for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. It
has become de rigueur to say and be
inclusive and to try to attract the young to the theatre and that is quite
right. Theatres need young people to replace the gray hairs and walkers that fill
the auditoriums.
Whyman and
Designer Tom Piper have chosen ill-defined modern costumes and do the entire
production on an almost empty stage. The dominant prop is a large box that is
open on two sides and bears resemblance to a bus stop shelter. It serves as the
balcony, Juliet’s bier, a platform for the death scene and for some of the
actors to climb on. Juliet dies in a chair and is carried to the top of the box
where she made love to Romeo.
Bally Gill and Karen Fishwick in Romeo and Juliet.
Photo: Topher McGrillis/RSC
Bally Gill is
the passionate and agile Romeo to Karen Fishwick’s clever and equally
passionate Juliet. I liked them but I did not love them. Whyman may have tried
hard to make them modern lovers so that the younger members of the audience may
identify with rather than those of a certain age. Fair enough if that is the
intention.
The vault of the Capulets consists of the aforementioned box with the
ghosts of Tybalt and Mercutio standing on each side. There is no mystery or
dread evoked by the scene at all. But Whyman goes a step further in reducing
the fear of death and the presence in a vault with dead bodies. When Romeo sees
the dead Juliet, he asks “Ah, dear Juliet, /Why art thou yet so fair?” For
reasons that escape me the following line is deleted in this production: “Shall
I believe / That unsubstantial death is amorous, / And that the lean abhorrèd
monster keeps / Thee here in dark to be his paramour.” Juliet is so beautiful
that the monster keeps her beautiful even after death because he is in love
with her. Why would any director delete a beautiful line like that?
Mercutio is played by Charlotte Josephine as an athletic, mercurial,
lithe young woman who is an adept boxer. She as he faces Juliet’s cousin Tybalt
(Raphael Sowole) who is quite the opposite of Mercutio in size but he still gets
the better of him.
Escalus, the Prince of Verona, is another role played by a woman but
Beth Cordingly makes an authoritative and convincing ruler. Michael Hodgson is
a very affectionate father to Juliet when he gets his way and powerfully
monstrous when he is gainsaid.
Andrew French is a sympathetic Friar Laurence. He wears a loose white
shirt and slacks and I could not figure out what type of friar he is. Even in
today’s secular society friars look about the same as they did in previous
centuries and I have never seen one dressed like French is in the role. Maybe I
lead a sheltered life and there are friars in white shirts and slacks all over
the place.
Juliet’s Nurse is usually good for a few good laughs but Whyman has
Ishia Bennison play her pretty straight. She may be a bit raunchy but you have
to use your imagination rather than feel her dirty-mindedness.
Whyman lays some emphasis on knife fights, presumably the weapon of
choice of modern youth. Knives and, in the United States, guns, are weapons of
choice but I am not sure that one can superimpose that fighting of the youth of
Verona in times of yore on the youth of today. Do we really need to stretch
that far to convince today’s youth to go the theatre?
Subject to these observations, this is a good production and Whyman did
not need to go to such lengths to make it relevant to modern youth. With a good
cast and intelligent directing, Rome and Juliet does fine on its
own.
__________
Romeo
and Juliet by William
Shakespeare continues until September 21, 2018 at the Royal Shakespeare
Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, England. www.rsc.org.uk
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