The 1984 / 85 Miners' Strike set houses against houses - often in the same street - as what started in The Winter of Discontent played out to a finish six years later amidst bitter hostility between strikers and scabs. Immersive Theatre set their Romeo and Juliet (at the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre until 24 October and on tour) during The Strike, with lots of "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie - Out, Out, Out!"-ing and ropey 80's hits for a soundtrack.
That terriible industrial, indeed ideological, dispute is a useful hook on which to hang the familiar tale of the star-crossed lovers and their feuding clans, but director James Tobias gets even more funky with Tybalt. Usually a hot-headed thug who gets no more than his just deserts from Romeo's knife, here he is a working miner, spat at and screamed at as he crosses the picket line, head bowed, ashamed, but the sole breadwinner for the Capulets, doing what he has to do. That context tilts the dynamic of the murders, with Romeo a significantly less sympathetic character after his raging revenge for Tybalt's killing of Mercutio - it's an interesting slant on a seemingly endlessly flexible set of characters.
There's plenty of laughs in the first half with Dan Dawes and James G Nunn having a lot of fun with lads about town Mercutio and Benvolio; laughs too from a somewhat camp James Sanderson as the Friar, played with a touch of the
Richard Wattis/
Derek Nimmo stock sitcom clergymen of the 60s and 70s. Simone Murphy's Juliet is gigglingly girlish with her Nurse, Roseanna Morris, coarse but caring as the older, wiser friend. Harry Anton broods as Tybalt, bringing a quiet dignity to a reluctant streetfighter. Rochelle Parry's Lady Capulet is traumatised, but traumatises us too in her casting out of Juliet, lines that carry so much more power (or so it seems) when spoken by the mother, rather than the father. Clive Keene's Romeo teeters on the edge of caricature at times, but stays just the right side, and he makes a charming, if rather more ruthless than expected, Romeo.
This is an excellent production for teenagers put off by orchards and balconies or for those a little older who might be returning to Shakespeare after grinding through Macbeth in Year 10. If the Yorkshire accents wobble a little and the age of Juliet feels a little unsettling when she looks and sounds like she's stepped out of Leeds' Primark and not Verona's Versace, well, blame Shakey and our 21st century ways. The familiar lines are delivered beautifully, especially Juliet's, and the comedy and tragedy get full value. And, set just before mobile phones became ubiquitous, even the plot works at the end.
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