Romeo & Juliet: the hipster version

So last night I went to see Romeo & Juliet at the Octagon in Bolton. I love that theater, its one of the great things about the town.

This play however not so much. One of Shakespeare's most famous and quoted works, it is a very strong foundation on which to build a play.
The setting was unsure of itself, we see at the beginning two *ultras*, one in a Roma shirt, another in the pale blue of Lazio, rival clubs from Rome. So is it set in Rome? Or Verona? Clearly textual authenticity must be maintained in linguistic terms but this incongruity was just the start of a jumbled up confused staging of the play.

On the one hand the costume was raging hipster, daft glasses and Sharp suits, and the other Juliet was rocking a 60s look, and the maid glamour ready for a night up Deansgate Locks. It was confused and uncohesive.

The cast as a whole was too old and a bit too rotund, not the fountain of youth at which first love tosses the penny of passion and conflict. They should be supple and vigorous, not portly and meandering.

Tibalt was somewhat fey and camp, despite snarled teeth and jackboots, not a 'duelist' of the first order. A black vest with a minor belly compounded this image. Mercutio too was older and rounder than he should have been. He did play the role with full physicallity and innuendo, but with garbled voice serrating the dialogue now and then as a blunt saw on cheap wood.

Romeo himself was too old and too deliberated, his passion calculated and madness full of method. He also unleashed a torrent of saliva with each new sentence, over pronouncing.

The maid, played by Michelle Collins of Eastenders fame, was a travesty. Over dressed and too young in appearance she blurred the line between maid and mother, who are meant to be seperate, by years and by social class. Why then did she have Gucci bags? She attacked the words with the subtlety of a pickaxe to the head, with no flow or poetry at all. She started with a cockney accent, then after the interval became posh, and then reverted to cockney.

Amidst this travesty of errors, Juliet was a revelation. A thin whisp of a woman she had the requisite youth to play her part. The balcony scene was modern, was fresh and she gave it the nervous energy of young love.

All on all must do better.