Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
Directed by Peter Evans. Set and costume designer Anna Tregloan. Lighting designer Benjamin Cisterne. Composer and sound designer Max Lyandvert. Associate fight director Thomas Royce-Hampton. Voice and understudy director Jack Starkey-Gif. Choreographer Simone Sault. Bell Shakespeare. The Playhouse. Canberra Theatre Centre. August 29=September 7. Bookings 62752700.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
 | |
| Madeline Li as Juliet and Ryan Hodson as Romeo |
Bell Shakespeare’s Artistic director Peter Evans has stripped back all superfluity to create a production of Romeo and Juliet that offers a powerful rendition of Shakespeare’s tragic tale of two star-crossed lovers. The set consists of two large platforms that encompass the Playhouse stage with a gap between to express the division that drives the action of the play. Above are globes that change colour to create the buoyant mood of the passage of love, but are not illuminated as misfortune and tragedy afflict the Houses of Montague and Capulet. Actors appear in black with add-ons to denote a change of character or occasion. Evans and his cast and creatives revive the traditional art of storytelling where engagement with the audience is riveting as though fresh-minted for all time. It is a tale told trippingly on the tongue serving the story and forecast with such clarity and import by the Prologue by Brittany Santariga.
Underpinning Evans’s seemingly sparse but richly layered production are Shakespeare’s themes of factional rivalry and hate, parenthood, the individual versus the state and the forcefulness of love in all its aspects. By playing out the emotions on an open stage unencumbered by distraction, Evans’s actors embody character with absolute conviction. In suiting the word to the action and the action to the word and holding the mirror as ‘twere up to nature, Evans’s cast have fashioned a Romeo and Juliet that is compelling in its modernity. Without the preconception of time or place, the audience is rapt in this fateful tale of doomed love. Thomas Royce-Hampton’s superbly choreographed sword fight between Tybalt (Tom Matthews) and Romeo (Ryan Hodson) and Anna Tregloan’s costume designs for the Masque, choreographed with finesse by Simone Sault, may reference the Elizabethan period but Evans’s tight direction ensures an immediacy that thrusts Shakespeare’s play into our own time and by its universality for all time.
 | |
| Adinia Wirasti (Lady Capulet) Khisraw Jones-Shukoor (Friar Lawrence)and Michael Wahr (Capulet) |
I am reminded as I watch the action unfold of the Chorus’s prologue to Henry V. “On your imaginations work” the Chorus asks. As Mercutio, played with larrikin bravado by Brittany Santariga, clutches at the wound there is no blood, nor when Lady Capulet’s hand is bathed in Tybalt’s blood and yet it is as palpable as if we were seeing it ooze from the sword’s fatal thrust. A carpet rolled out in Tregloan’s set design can represent the nave of the church where Friar Lawrence ( Khisraw Jones Shikoor) conspires to thwart the course of fate. It can guide us to the bedchamber of the distraught Juliet (Madeline Li) or become the tomb if our imaginations work.
With purposeful intent Max Lyandvert’s splendidly evocative composition and sound design directs our emotions from the blossoming infatuation of young love to the fury of the warring street gangs to the ominous sound of impending doom. This advancing tragedy is complemented by Benjamin Cisterne’s lighting design from a coloured stage to a stark sombriety. This is a carefully conceived production to relate a powerful tale and arouse the emotion.
Evans has assembled the finest ensemble cast that I have seen play Shakespeare’s tragic tale of love and woe. In Madeline Li’s Juliet and Ryan Hodson’s Romeo we see two young and emerging actors who are destined to light up future stages with their brilliance. Their impetuosity, naivety and passionate abandonment of consequence are played with such force that however well one knows the inevitability of their fate Li and Hodson deliver performances of such insight and truth that it is as though we are witnessing their lives unfold upon the atge for the very first time. Remember their names. They are the stars of tomorrow.
Li and Hodson are in good company. There are fine performances from all cast in this version of Shakespeare’s reimagining of the original Italian story. Evans has cast actors of different ethnic backgrounds, lending a uniqueness to each individual role that illuminates character and response to the circumstance. Santariga delivers the most lucid and witty interpretation of Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech. James Thomasson’s Benvolio epitomizes loyalty in friendship, while Tom Matthews perfects the swagger of arrogance and Tybalt’s loathing of the Montagues. Parental dilemma and love of an only child finds conflicted feelings in Michael Wahr’s Capulet and Adinia Wirasti’s Lady Capulet. Merridy Eastman’s Nurse lends the drama some comic relief with the inadvertent comedy of the simple, caring soul. Jack Halabi makes the best of the rather insipid role of the suitor Paris.
I look in amazement at Romeo and Juliet’s daunting national tour to all states and territories of Australia. In its 35th year Bell Shakespeare will be visiting twenty six cities and towns with arguably one of the best Bell Shakespeare productions the country is likely to see. Little wonder that Evans has chosen to let the actors carry the play as it was most likely performed in 1595, and edit the script to enable only the essential characters to tell the story. It makes for a far more dynamic performance of the play. This production of Romeo and Juliet allows Shakespeare’s words to transport us to the streets of Verona and become totally immersed in this immortal tale of fateful Love . If it comes to your town or a city nearby don’t miss it.
