ROMEO AND JULIET: Shakespeare, Touring till 27th August

Nottingham

ROMEO AND JULIET: Shakespeare
Heartbreak Productions: Tour Info 01926 430307 www.heartbreakproductions.co.uk
Runs: 2h 30m: one interval: till 22nd July then tours nationwide till 27th Aug
Performance times: Varies with venue
Review: Alan Geary: Nottingham: 19th July

A very confused production; it’s only intermittently amusing and never tragic.
There’s a basic problem with this Heartbreak production. If you haven’t read the programme - and you shouldn’t have to - director Peter Mimmack seems not to have made up his mind. Is it a presentation of the classic play itself or a take on it? Is it supposed to be spoken in ordinary English or in bogus Italian accents? Each character decides for himself.

Friar Lawrence [Thomas Hayler], who’s dressed as a priest rather than a friar, takes a third way out, effecting a Russian/Transylvanian accent.

Despite this confusion it manages, some of the time, to entertain.

It’s brazenly topical. The Montagues are in blue footie shirts, the Capulets in red and yellow, and there’s more than a hint of town-centre yob violence in the - incidentally well-done - fight scenes. We even get chundering after the Dance-music choreographed ball scene.

All this flies in the face of the text. In fact, there’s a lot of incongruence in this production; particularly in the yoof scenes, where over-busy histrionics like swinging round poles or hanging up-side down get in the way of the poetic dialogue.

Juliet has some of the most beautiful lines in the play but you’d never know it. Gemma Kelly either shouts or shrieks them, sometimes both simultaneously: she never allows them to speak for themselves.

The most entertaining moments derive from massive would-be comic insertions into the text. Before the action starts there’s protracted mock-Italian argy-bargy between the actors over who’s getting to ‘ply’ who - no-one wants to ‘ply’ the Nurse; and at points throughout the evening the text is treated as a disposable pantomime script. Consequently the essential tragic element of the play sinks almost without trace.

How can we be expected to feel a sense of heart-wrenching waste and pity at the end when all along we’ve been treated to a confused, only intermittently amusing, comedy?

Cast
Capulet/Apothecary/Peter: Andrew Cullum
Tybalt/Montague/Nurse/Servant/Friar John: Dan Mc Garry
Juliet: Gemma Kelly
Prince Escalus/Paris/Mercutio: Matt Robinson
Romeo: Robert Curtis
Benvolio/Friar Lawrence: Thomas Hayler

Director: Peter Mimmack
Design, Costume and Set: Paul Barrett
Movement: Geoffrey Buckley
Choreographer: Helen Parlour

2006-07-20 17:28:15