York Theatre Royal – 16 May 2017. Reviewed by Marcus Richardson
Oh Romeo, oh Romeo… if you can’t tell what play this is already, then I think you’ve been living under a rock for the past 400 years. Now we all know the famous Classic tragedy of woe and love, some of us love it and some of us hate it with a passion. With most productions of Romeo And Juliet, directors and theatre creators find a way to modernise the play though use of setting and time period. Setting the play modern day with a gangesque feel is often done, but I don’t know how to describe the feel I got from the adaptation, but I can say that I loved it but I don’t know why. I find myself rarely thinking this, for me it stood out from the endless sea of Romeo and Juliet’s.
When you first walk into the main theatre the show had already begun with, actors on stage singing modern songs my regret here is that I was spending my time at the bar and not listening to the songs since they were strong singers with great musical talent playing a variety of instruments as well. When the play officially started we were given ‘Take Me To Church’, this really suited the aesthetic and really set the feel for the play. It would be hard not to talk about the actors who played the title roles, with Aruhan Galieva playing the 13 year old independent Juliet and Stuart Wilde taking on the role of Romeo a 17 year old who is constantly in love and devoted to it. These two were both exceptional and both very strong actors, but I found myself leaning towards two other actors; Victoria Blunt who played Benvolio was out of this world switching the gender of the role and also creating a relationship with her fellow actors on stage, the other actor was Lauryn Redding who played the nurse the role of the nurse offers a lot of comic relief throughout the play even to one of the saddest moments, I think she bought extra to the role with me finding standing out of the crowd with the other R+Js I’ve seen.
The stage was fairly brought to live by its set, but it was used with the countless scene changes in the play, bear with me here, we had a bar to the back of the stage and the ever so famous balcony, but we didn’t wait for scene changes at it snapped from scene to scene, with little hidden feature lending for great stage craft and I thank them for this since scene changes are something I mostly hate.
Now without a word of a doubt, I would say go and see this show, and I have to admit R+J isn’t for everyone and I think people overlook this play because I have to admit it is overdone. But that’s because it is a good play and in this instance a strong cast, I found myself entertained throughout the whole play and I’ve seen other productions before and this stood out by a mile, so drop the overdone excuse of not seeing it, and go see it.