Keeping Faith
How a Welsh thriller became the unlikely hit of the year
This must be the most fleet-footed account of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ since ‘West Side Story’
Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-avon
★★★★★
Romeo and Juliet comes around so often that it’s rare for actors to have a claim to lasting memory in the roles of Shakespeare’s “starcrossed lovers”. But in 1960, John Stride – who died a few weeks ago aged 81 – was Romeo to Judi Dench’s Juliet in a Franco Zeffirelli production at the Old Vic that was hailed as a landmark. How so? The critic Kenneth Tynan explained: “Nobody on stage seems to be aware that he is appearing in an immortal tragedy… Instead the actors behave like ordinary human beings, trapped in a quandary whose outcome they cannot foretell.”
That, in essence, decades later, is the prime virtue of Erica Whyman’s revival at the RSC: no one on stage appears to know what’s coming. Things start relatively light and inconsequential, then slide. Everything almost turns out fine, except not.
This must be the most fleet-footed account of Romeo and Juliet since West Side Story. Whyman has boldly incorporated into the company a handful of pupils from schools across the country; their freshness rubs off on to the rest of the cast. The scenesetting prologue, everyone in contemporary clobber, is a playground free-for-all, a gabble of voices. You might wonder where the mobile phones are if these are the teens of today, but the grim point made is that the must-have accessory is a knife. How you act, how you strut – that’s the difference between making it down the street and getting shanked.
Is there something too external and look-at-me about Bally Gill’s Romeo? “Under love’s heavy burden do I sink,” he tells Charlotte Josephine’s everthrusting, cockney Mercutio, miming the collapse. Yet his very selfconsciousness, which has its own sweet charm, perversely makes his a real, raw Romeo.
His entourage are the sort of immature, show-off juveniles you might see loitering in a provincial town on a Saturday night; no discernible future. And what’s in store besides thankless obedience for Karen Fishwick’s Scottish-accented Juliet – under the psychotic thumb of Michael Hodgson’s Capulet – unless, with the reckless assistance of Ishia Bennison’s kindly Nurse, she secretly marries the love of her life? Or is he? She’s overwrought, ardent, exclamatory; at that age when everything matters and there’s no perspective. Again, blade-sharp. Not everything works. Tom Piper’s clutter-free set is more Ikea warehouse than fair Verona – reliant on a rotating cuboid structure so insistently dour it turns the balcony scene into something that Philomena Cunk might raise a wry eyebrow at. There’s also overmuch use of what looks like an aeroplaneboarding stairway. And I’d kill those bits where the bloodied dead lurk in the shadows. Excellent in parts, then, and arriving after a misfiring Macbeth, as welcome as a May morning.
Until Sept 21. Tickets: 01789 403493; rsc.org.uk