From October 2018 to January 2019, the Royal Shakespeare company performed a modernised version of Shakespeare’s popular play Romeo and Juliet at the Barbican theatre, located in central London.
At first glance at the title ‘Romeo and Juliet’, one would expect a performance reflecting how it would have been performed during Elizabethan time. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see the actors came out in costumes alike London street style, already suggesting as an audience member that the ‘two hours traffic of this stage’, would be engaging and different to any ordinary interpretation of the famed play by William Shakespeare. The play was humorous and contained a great deal of sexual language, although hard to identify their erotic meanings at first, were emphasised and added with quite sensual actions to highlight the meaning to those who were not as familiar with the Shakespeare script. The play was acted well, especially by stars, Bally Gill (Romeo) and Karen Fishwick (Juliet) it was especially impressive the phenomenal memory all the cast had, due of the numerous amounts of lines written by Shakespeare they had to remember. The cast had quite the CV portfolio with plenty of TV shows, Films and other Theatre productions they had featured on beforehand.
A notable detail in the play which added to the humour factor personally for me was in the first scene when Stevie Basaula (Sampson) ‘Flossed’ a popular Fortnite move, performed by pre-teens and teens now. It was also seemingly memorable to others who when exiting the first half of the play were discussing it. One of my favourite things about the show was their ability to transform the scene with few props, a prominent prop was a cube with trap doors and ladders. Additionally, the background in certain acts altered to rocky and dullish to a background full of greenery. The props enhanced and made the play even better. Overall, due to enjoying the performance, I would recommend, even if a regular viewer of theatre or those who want to add to their knowledge of Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet whether for advantages to classroom work or just as a form of entertainment.
