There’s a quality of endurance to a great many classic texts throughout dramatic history, which is not brought about by sheer luck or co-incidence, nor particularly by an unwavering series of fantastic productions. Instead, the capture of a vitally engaging story told with powerful use of language are instead the elements I believe establish a play as a classic. The RSC’s current touring production of Romeo and Juliet proves these points of my theory. We begin with text. It’s Romeo and Juliet so I assume you know the story. It’s a tale of 16 year old boy meets 13 year old girl (think Lolita without the controversy) and they fall in love and even get married, despite their fueding families, whose main objection is that the families historically hate each other rather than the potential grooming charges that might be levelled. Like I say it’s a captivating story and the writing is undoubtedly beautiful and memorable. It is Shakespeare after all. These words have the potential to pack a powerfully emotive punch on an audience provided they are approached with sensitivity.
Unfortunately, in this production the writing is let down by the casts failure to connect with the text. To tell a love story well there needs to be a nuance in the pacing but that was not evidenced here. The actors (all of them) rushed their lines faster than Spuds job interview in Trainspotting and the end result was a total lack of textual clarity with no discernible benefit to this approach. From that point on it’s an uphill struggle to engage with this production. There are other aspects of disappointment in this production but for the moment, let’s focus on the things that worked well because I don’t like to be a pessimist.
The set design is one that can be highlighted for this purpose. Fairly modest and in typical RSC style of high box walls and some kind of square features in the middle, in this instance a raised platform acting as Juliet’s bed, balcony and tomb served to facilitate one of the better ideas of the production in the Capulets assumptions of Juliet’s grief for Tybalt being repudiated by her and Romeo being seen in bed above. It’s a neat idea but like so many ideas in this production, simply not pursued. Other ideas were felt too greatly forced, a prime example of this being Charlotte Josephine’s Mercutio, whose loud and brash portrayal grated to such an extent that it was a relief when she finally attempted one hip thrust too many onto the point of Tybalts sword. Again, Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech is one of those sections in the play that audiences pay to see but like so much of the rest of the approach to this text the understanding and execution is simply inadequate.
Though there’s never particularly a crisis point in terms of quality in this production, there never seemed to be any redeeming feature which could lend itself to being considered an achieved objective here. There was no clarity of themes and in Romeo And Juliet there are plenty to choose from. Wherever a theme or idea was touched upon it wasn’t followed up. This production was quite clearly a testing ground for ideas perhaps to be expanded upon in future RSC productions, but for its current audience it was underwhelming.
Reviewer - Karl Barnsley
on - 27/2/19
Agree with everything Karl says and would like to add that the RSC should not be a testing ground for modern adaptations. Their role is not to modernise to attract young audiences, it's to portray Shakespeare as the Bard intended, with lavish costumes and professionalism. I'm not a theatre snob by the way, I haven't been since my college days 30 years ago, but saw this was on and bought the tickets as a Valentine's day present for my wife. How bitterly disappointed we both were by this production as the cast looked like they were dressed for a rehearsal. It looked and felt like a school production and I'm sure a bunch of 10 year olds couldn't have done a worse job. You expect a modern spin from smaller theatre companies, that's their job, but for pity's sake, not the RSC. If this is the standard we are to expect now, then I won't be returning to the theatre for another 30 years. Which is all a bit of a shame. Sadly I wasn't on my own here as the couple next to us walked out at half time and they weren't the only ones. Final add, it's okay for Mercutio to be played by a female, but does she have to wear a bra with a see through top?
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