Juliet & Romeo (Lost Dog) @ Nottingham Playhouse
January 26, 2019
What if Romeo and Juliet escaped the crypt together? Lost Dog’s dance production is not the first to explore this question, but perhaps offered one of the more innovative approaches to answering it. This two-person show (plus, at this performance at least, the outstanding BSL interpretation of Clare Edwards) invited its audience into the therapy …
Black (dir. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah) @ Broadway Cinema
September 7, 2016
Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s Black is painful and upsetting. It’s hardly the first film to reimagine Romeo and Juliet as an urban gang war, a setting that reappears from West Side Story to Romeo and Juliet in Harlem, and canonised as a reading by Baz Luhrmann’s inescapable film (quoted visually here in a …
Romeo and Juliet in Harlem (dir. Aleta Chapelle) @ Warwick Arts Centre Cinema
April 25, 2015
The second of the two films in Warwick’s annual Shakespeare Film Day was a very special occasion – the first screening in the UK (probably) of the first Shakespeare film made by an African-American woman. Aleta Chappelle’s most significant feature as director to date, which used a crowd-funded trailer to attract funding, is a low budget …
A Tender Thing (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre, Stratford
October 14, 2012
Unlike the Olympics, the World Shakespeare Festival doesn’t have a Closing Ceremony. There is no grand climax, no image of Prospero/Shakespeare drowning his books and asking for our applause, not even a celebrity-studded event production. Instead, the last officially badged World Shakespeare Festival production to open was this: a two-hander played (on this occasion) to …
Romeo and Juliet (Headlong Theatre) @ Nottingham Playhouse
March 15, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.headlongtheatre.co.uk/productions/production_details.php?Title=Romeo_and_Juliet_&production_id=29 Robert Icke, director of Headlong Theatre’s new touring Romeo and Juliet, has clearly been taking notes from company director Rupert Goold. As with the last Headlong show I experienced, King Lear, everything up to and including the kitchen sink (in this case, an open air ice-cream stall) had been thrown …
Gnomeo and Juliet (Rocket Productions) @ Showcase Cinema, Coventry
February 24, 2011
Writing about web page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377981/ Film versions of Shakespeare are required, one way or another, to confront the docu-real potentiality of the medium in the transition from stage to screen. While a very few choose to exploit the possibilities for historical drama and lush scenography, the heightened language and inevitable familiarity of subject matter more …
Romeo and Juliet (RSC) @ The Courtyard Theatre
March 26, 2010
Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whatson/8956.aspx From its very opening, Rupert Goold’s new Romeo and Juliet was intent on forcing its audience to view a familiar play afresh. Sam Troughton’s Romeo, in jeans and hoodie, wandered onto the stage with a camera, taking photographs as if a tourist (though this amateur stalker had a different kind …
Romeo and Juliet (Tiny Ninja Theater) @ Tara Studio
February 27, 2010
Writing about web page http://www.tinyninjatheater.com/romeoandjuliet/ Dov Weinstein’s classical theatre troupe, the Tiny Ninja Theater, returned to the UK for two performances only with this, Romeo and Juliet, performed as part of the Tara Arts “Shakespeare Remixed” season. As ever, the defining characteristics of the company shone through – powerful performances, elaborate sets and an accessible …
Romeo and Juliet @ Shakespeare’s Globe
May 14, 2009
Writing about web page http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/theatre/annualtheatreseason/romeojuliet/ The desire to cast Romeo and Juliet as young as possible is deep-ingrained in theatre directors. In Dominic Dromgoole’s new production for Shakespeare’s Globe, for example, the actors playing Juliet, Benvolio and Tybalt all make their professional stage debut. It’s an ongoing risk: the potential gains in youth and energy …
Romeo and Juliet (RSC) @ The Courtyard Theatre
December 8, 2008
Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whatson/6433.aspx I’m not going to beat around the bush with this review. The RSC’s new production of Romeo and Juliet is one of the worst productions of Shakespeare I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit through. As hard as I tried to find some positive aspects to the production, I honestly …
Find, follow, join us
