The Stage

Romeo and Juliet

Published Friday 19 March 2010 at 12:30 by Pat Ashworth

The opening fight in this mind-blowing production is so vividly realised that when a petrol-soaked rag is stuffed in the mouth of a pinioned youth, there’s every expectation of a horrific climax. This is gang warfare at its bloodiest and when the Montagues gatecrash the Capulet ball, they penetrate not some elegant masque but something fierce and tribal, a huge statement of power.

A scene from Romeo and Juliet at the Courtyard, Stratford-upon-Avon Photo: Ellie Kurttz

Period dress for all except Romeo and Juliet exposes the vulnerability of the pair and the timelessness of their situation. The lovers are perfectly cast. Sam Troughton’s unruly and engaging Romeo whizzes round on a pushbike in ecstasy and Mariah Gale’s fragile but rebellious Juliet dresses in baggy tops and swings her legs from the balcony as though she’s used to being up a tree.

She is at her most vulnerable hunched and hooded at the breakfast table, battered into submission by a Lord Capulet (Richard Katz) who turns from tender father into wild-eyed brute, and a tense, cigarette-smoking mother, a beautifully taut performance by Christine Entwisle. Only when she is forcibly dressed for her wedding does the child Juliet become an Elizabethan woman.

Jonjo O’Neill is an outrageous Mercutio, taking dumbshow to new limits, and Noma Dumezweni’s shrewd Nurse is a woman not to be messed with. The religious overtones are dark and heavy. Fires suddenly flame, hell beckons and solo voices sing the liturgy, and yet Goold extracts every ounce of humour and delight as well. It’s going to be the talk of the town.