Sunday 21 May 2017

Time gets harder to outrun

And so to the theatre. The main question that people have been asking me recently - besides whether I have any more photos of the Young Farmers Ladies Tug-of-War at the Otley Show - is why it's been so long since I last went to see Romeo and Juliet; it must be a couple of months at least. Well, you can all stop worrying, because I have been to see the production that Watermill Theatre are putting on as part of the York International Shakespeare Festival. The show was preceded by a very interesting talk from Dr Helen Smith, Director of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at York University, who my subsequent research tells me is, amongst other things, an expert on the link between reading and digestion. I hope and trust that your perusal of this blog will swiftly result in a productive visit to the place of easement.

The programme promised a show that highlighted the youthfulness of the characters, but let's be honest, they all do. Barring Sir Ken Branagh's decision to have a much older Mercutio they all make a fuss about how young the actors are without actually going the whole hog and casting a thirteen year old to play Juliet; probably because they'd get arrested if they did. For the record the cross gender roles on this occasion were Benvolio, Friar Laurence and the Prince. The first two happen so often that I'd be more surprised now if they weren't played by women.

I have seen the play so many times that it's all becoming a bit blurred between what is the original text, what is necessary because of limitations of cast numbers, and what is directors putting their personal stamp on it; Dr Smith in one sense made things worse for me by drawing attention to the fact that there were differences between the various versions published in and shortly after the author's lifetime. I will therefore restrict myself to commenting on two things that I am pretty sure were new to me. The second and third scenes in Act 3 (the Nurse telling Juliet of Tybalt's death and Romeo lamenting to the Friar his banishment from Verona) were played simultaneously, cutting between the two in the way that one could imagine happening in a film, and I thought it worked rather well. Less happily, Mercutio played the whole of Act 2, Scene 4 in a wetsuit and flippers: it was by no means clear why. One possibility is that it has something to do with the song 'Wetsuit' - which the cast may have sung before the action started; I'm not entirely au fait with the Vaccines' oeuvre so I can't positively swear to that - but it just made me think of Kermit the Frog.  Anyway, it looked as ridiculous as you would imagine, especially while he was engaging in his 'saucy merchant' banter with the Nurse.

Despite that, I enjoyed it. The cast were not only young they were energetic, enthusiastic and musical. There is of course a lot more fighting and killing than wooing and loving in the play - for the benefit of the apprentices in the audience according to Dr Smith - and the cast seemed more comfortable with that aspect, throwing themselves about with vigour. However, the reality is that convincing chemistry between the eponymous leads is rather rare; these two were no worse than many I've seen.

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