Romeo and Juliet
Playwright: William Shakespeare Directors: Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford Garrick Theatre, London WC2 (0330-333 4811) Until 13 August Running time: 2hrs 45mins (including interval)
“For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” That’s the famous closing couplet of Shakespeare’s shakiest romantic tragedy, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer. And when done poorly – as in this strangely limp revival – it’s a very woeful experience indeed. The play’s “swift, sad arc” and golden poetry are beguiling; but its plot “is slapdash; the coincidences prepostrous; the main characters not interestingly conflicted, just doomed”. To overcome that, the play needs to be “bewitchingly choreographed” and spoken with passion, else “it ends up looking less like a tragedy and more like an accident”. This, alas, is what happens in Kenneth Branagh’s production – and the lukewarm chemistry between the young lovers compounds the problem.
Still, it’s lovely to look at, said Ann Treneman in The Times. “The men’s suits are sharp, the women’s waists are waspy, the espresso is served in tiny cups by dashing waiters.” It’s La Dolce Vita, lush and romantic, a beautiful piazza in a Fellini-esque Verona. What’s missing, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph, is “a basic sense of the play mattering”. You feel the directors were more interested in the “picturesque overview” than detailed character work. Richard Madden’s Romeo is “maddeningly ordinary”, apparently lacking all “hormonal passion”, angst or volatility (and no great shakes at speaking verse). This is a particular shame, since Lily James (of War and Peace and Downton Abbey fame) is entrancing as Juliet.
James is wonderful from the outset, agreed Christopher Hart in The Sunday Times. At 27, she captures beautifully “the girlish Juliet, just short of her 14th birthday. She turns cartwheels of glee across the stage, she gushes, sulks, dissembles, giggles and yearns.” Derek Jacobi is also fine as Mercutio: instead of the usual young nobleman, Jacobi plays him as an ageing, camp playboy, sashaying around in white dinner jacket with a silvertopped cane. Overall, however, this is no more than “an efficient and good-looking production that comes nowhere near your heartstrings”.