Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Bell Shakespeare at Canberra Theatre Playhouse, August 29 – September 7 2025.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night, September 1
Director – Peter Evans
Set & Costume Designer – Anna Tregloan
Lighting Designer – Benjamin Cisterne
Composer & Sound Designer – Max Lyandvert
Associate Fight Director – Thomas Royce-Hampton
Voice & Understudy Director – Jack Starkey-Gill
Choreographer – Simone Sault
Cast:
Juliet – Madeline Li; Nurse – Merridy Eastman; Paris – Jack Halabi
Romeo – Ryan Hodson; Friar – Khisraw Jones-Shukoor
Tybalt – Tom Mathews; Mercutio / Prince – Brittany Santariga
Benvolio – James Thomasson; Capulet – Michael Wahr
Lady Capulet – Adinia Wirasti
Understudy – Caitlin Burley; Thomas Royce-Hampton
William Shakespeare makes it very clear that he is presenting us with a play, which
“Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.”
Bell Shakespeare, in this production thoroughly true to William’s intention, makes sure we miss nothing. We see actors working brilliantly, taking on their characters, presenting us with a play of words, often times a play on words.
This requires, for a start, a director who clearly understands and knows how to impart that understanding of what is known as Presentational Style – the style necessary for Romeo and Juliet to become far more than a sentimental sob story of the two lovers’ deaths.
It is a morality play about political ‘families’ becoming trapped in conflicts based purely on ‘loyalties’ and misrepresentations to the point of self-destruction.
The only hope Shakespeare could offer was to have Capulet say finally “O brother Montague! Give me thy hand”, while Montague offers a grand “statue in pure gold” to commemorate Juliet.
If they had shaken hands from the beginning of the young men's violence, as the Prince had ordered, then it would not have become such a story of more woe. Like the stories of Palestine and Israel, say.
The full value of this work by Peter Evans and his exciting team of actors is in the clarity of all those words, their meanings and their implications. We feel particularly, as Evans’ writes in an excellent From the Director, for Romeo who “says of his intervention in the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt: I thought all for the best.”
But there is never such a thing as a ‘just’ war. “Go hence” says the Prince of Verona in the play’s last words, “to have more talk of these sad things;
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
I thank Bell Shakespeare for the honesty and sincerity of their presentation of Romeo and Juliet.
Their toil is not to be missed.
