November 19, 2008
This is a bold, intense, powerful, shocking version of Romeo and Juliet. See it at once, but leave all your expectations of what going to the theatre is all about at home.
What do you do when you’re contemplating putting on a Shakespeare play that is so often performed, as well as featured in a huge hit movie, that your audience knows it backwards? You decide – god-like – that your audience is not going to be given what it expects. You make them take off their coats and bags. You make them wear white plastic Halloween masks. You lead them into a theatre from which all the seating and all the staging have been removed, so that it appears a great pit, where there is no spatial barrier between actors and watchers. You act the play backwards. Sometimes you act two scenes at once in different parts of the pit. You use the actors to direct and place the audience, and sometimes the audience become the actors and the actors watch them, rather disconcertingly putting their heads over the watchers’ shoulders. The audience is free to stand, sit, walk, run, or dance where they choose; rather as if they were watching buskers in the street. The sacredness of the stage does not exist, the sanctity of the actors is blown away. The audience become voyeurs. Safe behind their masks, they can put their faces inches away from actors, choose to abandon one scene and watch another, walk to a different spot to get a better view. The cast – unmasked and therefore recognisable – move among the audience, gently inviting them to dance, walk, move.
The play itself is telescoped; some scenes are omitted, some performed two at once; the whole thing takes only about an hour and a half. It is very intense; and, after the initial shock and the annoyance of clashing voices wears off, it is exceptionally powerful drama. Sometimes the cast become one organism and speak in unison as a tragic chorus, striking contorted poses of grief and rage almost reminiscent of the finest Compianto sul Christo Morto statues, some creating a weird background ululation, half song, half howl, as the others cry out their lines. There were some problems with bringing this concept to fruition in that space, mainly to do with the acoustics; a cacophony of conflicting yells was sometimes the result of the multiple scenes, and on at least one occasion a rather intrusive musical sound-track was played over some lines the audience would have preferred to hear. At first repulsed by the strangeness of it all and hanging about on the margins of the room, the audience was gradually won over – including my eleven year old daughter, who at first begged to be taken home, but was soon gripped by the unfolding story and running to be at the front for the next scene. For the final scene (the death of the lovers in this version) the audience crowded round the actors in sudden strange intimacy.
Lindsay Dukes was an outstanding Juliet, resolute, brave, strong, beautiful. Etiene Ekpo-Utip was a gorgeous Romeo, convincingly growing from the rather soppy lover of the early scenes to a young man facing grief and death with dignity. Sam Bright was superb as Juliet’s father, especially in the scene where he explains what will happen to her if she doesn’t marry Paris – all delivered in a quiet, intense, venomous monotone, which he would not have been able to do with conventional staging. The fight scenes were also stunning, although conducted in a stylized manner with umbrellas instead of swords; Romeo’s fatal thrust at Tybalt was brilliantly figured by having his umbrella open to release a shower of tiny scraps of red paper, shockingly portraying what I believe CSI refers to as arterial spray.
There was just too much in this wonderful production to note in a short review. Go and see it now.
What do you do when you’re contemplating putting on a Shakespeare play that is so often performed, as well as featured in a huge hit movie, that your audience knows it backwards? You decide – god-like – that your audience is not going to be given what it expects. You make them take off their coats and bags. You make them wear white plastic Halloween masks. You lead them into a theatre from which all the seating and all the staging have been removed, so that it appears a great pit, where there is no spatial barrier between actors and watchers. You act the play backwards. Sometimes you act two scenes at once in different parts of the pit. You use the actors to direct and place the audience, and sometimes the audience become the actors and the actors watch them, rather disconcertingly putting their heads over the watchers’ shoulders. The audience is free to stand, sit, walk, run, or dance where they choose; rather as if they were watching buskers in the street. The sacredness of the stage does not exist, the sanctity of the actors is blown away. The audience become voyeurs. Safe behind their masks, they can put their faces inches away from actors, choose to abandon one scene and watch another, walk to a different spot to get a better view. The cast – unmasked and therefore recognisable – move among the audience, gently inviting them to dance, walk, move.
The play itself is telescoped; some scenes are omitted, some performed two at once; the whole thing takes only about an hour and a half. It is very intense; and, after the initial shock and the annoyance of clashing voices wears off, it is exceptionally powerful drama. Sometimes the cast become one organism and speak in unison as a tragic chorus, striking contorted poses of grief and rage almost reminiscent of the finest Compianto sul Christo Morto statues, some creating a weird background ululation, half song, half howl, as the others cry out their lines. There were some problems with bringing this concept to fruition in that space, mainly to do with the acoustics; a cacophony of conflicting yells was sometimes the result of the multiple scenes, and on at least one occasion a rather intrusive musical sound-track was played over some lines the audience would have preferred to hear. At first repulsed by the strangeness of it all and hanging about on the margins of the room, the audience was gradually won over – including my eleven year old daughter, who at first begged to be taken home, but was soon gripped by the unfolding story and running to be at the front for the next scene. For the final scene (the death of the lovers in this version) the audience crowded round the actors in sudden strange intimacy.
Lindsay Dukes was an outstanding Juliet, resolute, brave, strong, beautiful. Etiene Ekpo-Utip was a gorgeous Romeo, convincingly growing from the rather soppy lover of the early scenes to a young man facing grief and death with dignity. Sam Bright was superb as Juliet’s father, especially in the scene where he explains what will happen to her if she doesn’t marry Paris – all delivered in a quiet, intense, venomous monotone, which he would not have been able to do with conventional staging. The fight scenes were also stunning, although conducted in a stylized manner with umbrellas instead of swords; Romeo’s fatal thrust at Tybalt was brilliantly figured by having his umbrella open to release a shower of tiny scraps of red paper, shockingly portraying what I believe CSI refers to as arterial spray.
There was just too much in this wonderful production to note in a short review. Go and see it now.