Romeo and Juliet at the Leicester Square Theatre June 11, 2010
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , trackbackIn Mussolini’s Italy, the Capulets are blackshirts and the Montagues are Jewish. With very slight changes to the script and an extra prologue to bring the play into 1939, this works well. Capulet (Greg Gee), Paris (Dan Moore) and Tybalt (Martin Dickenson) have a fascist confidence in their own superiority, the right of a renaissance father to dispose of his daughter as he pleases sickeningly apt. Olivia Vinall is a convincing and sensitive Juliet, well and truly the star of the piece.
The tiny space of the basement in the Leicester Square Theatre has no room for a balcony. The audience area, with dining chairs and a bar feels like a thirties cabaret, barely separated from the set. Combined with the music, much of it played live by the actors, the whole space invokes a tense Verona with violence never far away.
This is not the sumptuous, multifaceted Shakespeare you get at the RSC. It’s pared down, with a small cast and smaller budget, getting to the tragedy at the heart of the play and laying it bare. This theatre should be very full.
Romeo and Juliet runs at the Leicester Square Theatre until 11 July and tickets are £15-20.
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