Arguably Shakespeare’s most passionate and heartbreaking drama, Romeo and Juliet unravels the tangle of emotions in the hearts and minds of the forbidden lovers, and their friends and families. Read more …
The play is an elegy for doomed youth, exploring the damage that social divisions and family feuds can inflict. The impact on Shakespeare’s star cross’d lovers, and on the society around them, is overwhelming. The outcome is lies, conflict and the play’s famously tragic ending.
With themes that speak as powerfully in this age as in his own, Romeo and Juliet demonstrates Shakespeare as a writer for all time.
Kirsty Mackay and, especially, Will Featherstone rise to the occasion with aplomb in a chic affair that isn’t shy of under-cutting some of the play’s more sacred set-pieces in a quietly ambitious if, at times, underwhelming production.
Constantly creative...this is a production meant for the stage and not a poetry recital.
Around the romance, the telling of it ripples with comedy and dashes off with strong and intelligent thrusts, trusting the words and making them clear to a modern ear.
While the chemistry between the pair here is believable, Juliet’s transition within an evening from scooter-riding kid to savvy lover is hard to swallow.
Every word of every speech glistens with life and understanding.
Cast and director have made a fabulous job of breathing new life into this colourful, touching and desperately sad tale of youthful passion and tribal intolerance, creating in the process a rare beast indeed.
Featherstone and Mackay play it out with a purity of purpose, to be sure, but it is on the surrounding institutions: family, state and church, that the production turns its unstinting light. All three, it seems, are equally to blame in this fine, fine production.
A welcome example of the Lyceum’s ongoing contributions to Scottish theatre.
Romeo and Juliet and The Importance of Being Earnest set for the Edinburgh Lyceum
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh from Friday September 17, 2010, until Saturday October 16, 2010. More info: www.lyceum.org.uk
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