The youth are f**ked.
Left to their own devices in their parents’ world of violent ends, an impulsive pair of star-crossed lovers hurtle towards their inescapable fate. The intoxicating high of passion quickly descends into a brutal chaos that can only end one way.
Emmy Award winner Kit Connor (“Heartstopper”) and Golden Globe Award winner Rachel Zegler (Spielberg’s “West Side Story”) star as Romeo and Juliet in Tony Award-winning director Sam Gold’s (Fun Home, An Enemy of the People) visceral and visionary production. Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy now belongs to a new generation on the edge.
As the lovers hurtle toward their deaths, the already-speedy production gains more steam. (Romeo’s fatal encounter with Paris goes by the wayside.) As a result the ending feels abrupt—wait, the party’s over, and everyone’s dead? This may in part be why Mr. Gold doesn’t succeed in making us feel the awe and horror, the sense of waste, we should at the mischances that result in the deaths of the lovers. But at least it lets Mr. Connor and Ms. Zegler out at a reasonable hour to greet the hundreds of fans waiting for them after the performance. While this isn’t the most subtle or emotionally resonant “Romeo and Juliet,” it is unquestionably bringing enthusiastic younger audiences to the theater, in itself a worthy and impressive achievement.
And because Gold lets the initial energy and urgency go limp, he sacrifices the chance to say something 2024-ish about youth culture or the inevitable violence of tribalism, the sort of low-hanging but potent fruit that he seems to be intent on plucking early on. But just as first love can blind the smitten to obvious flaws, maybe the imperfections of first Shakespeares can be similarly ignored. Let’s hope the Bard’s new bevy of devotees are won over and here to stay.
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Kenneth Branagh West End Revival West End |
2018 | West End |
RSC Production at the Barbican West End |
2024 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
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