Review Roundup: ROMEO & JULIET Starring Tom Holland & Francesca Amewudah-Rivers

Tom Holland is Romeo and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers is Juliet in Jamie Lloyd’s new vision of Shakespeare’s immortal tale of wordsmiths, rhymers, lovers and fighters. Read the reviews!

The cast includes Freema Agyeman (Nurse), Michael Balogun (Friar), Tomiwa Edun (Capulet), Mia Jerome (Montague), Daniel Quinn-Toye (Paris), Ray Sesay (Tybalt), Nima Taleghani (Benvolio), Joshua-Alexander Williams (Mercutio), Callum Heinrich and Kody Mortimer (Camera Operators). Understudies Nathaniel Christian, Shardé Neikaiya and Phillip Olagoke complete the cast.

The creative team includes Set and Costume Design: Soutra Gilmour; Lighting Design: Jon Clark; Sound Design; Ben and Max Ringham; Video Design and Cinematography: Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom; Composer: Michael 'Mikey J’ Asante; Text edited by Nima Taleghani; Casting Director: Stuart Burt CDG; Movement Directors: Sarah Golding & Yukiko Masui (SAY); Intimacy Coordinator: Ingrid Mackinnon; Voice Coach: Hazel Holder; Associate Director: Jonathan Glew; Associate Designer: Rachel Wingate; Associate Costume Designer: Anna Josephs.

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Kat Mokrynski, BroadwayWorld: Holland, most well-known to most as Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, returns to the stage after over a decade. He does a fantastic job with both moments of romance and those of anger, being reduced to tears at several points throughout the show and reaching the breaking point of his character with ease. While he is the star billing of the show, it is Amewudah-Rivers who truly steals the show, with her Juliet taking charge in the relationship and longing to live life the way she chooses. 

Houman Barekat, The New York Times: Yet this “Romeo and Juliet,” directed by Jamie Lloyd (“Sunset Boulevard,” “The Effect”) and running at the Duke of York’s Theater through Aug. 3, is no straightforward crowd-pleaser. The visuals are stripped-down and the staging unconventional; instead of indulging the giddy melodrama of young love, the emphasis is on brooding atmospherics. The show is slickly executed by a talented cast and production crew, but its understated rendering of the lovers’ romantic infatuation may leave some theatergoers wanting more.

Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out London: For Lloyd, ‘Romeo & Juliet’ is another step down his increasingly auteur-ish path. Exactly what’s in it for Holland is an intriguing question – it shows he’s versatile, can work in an ensemble, and rise to the challenge of leftfield director’s theatre (and is stacked), but it’s not the sort of BIG Shakespearean performance that necessarily wins a bunch of awards and shifts the dial on Spider-Man being the thing he’s known for. It’s a pretty weird night at the theatre, frankly. But adjust to its fugue state and it’s deeply compelling. Another one of Shakespeare’s heroes asked what dreams may come in death. This unsettling production feels like the answer.

David Benedict, Variety: The relationship is captivating. The energy flowing effortlessly between them means you instantly feel their connection, their shared affection, their give and take. It’s by far the strongest relationship in the production. The only difficulty is that it’s the one between Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Juliet and Freema Agyeman’s outstanding Nurse. And in Jamie Lloyd’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” starring the headline-grabbing Tom Holland (in a run that sold out in two hours), that’s quite a problem. And not the only one.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian: But it seems, at times, like a deconstructed Romeo and Juliet, refusing to give in to the ardour of the text, and sometimes caging it in. There is moody whispering into microphones and muffled sotto voce which brings languorous intimacy but also stasis. Actors speak their lines – in a line – at the audience, a recurring tic in Lloyd’s work, now more insistently puzzling in its distancing, anti-dramatic effects, and too stilted to let loose the play’s passion. When scenes are traditionally acted out, they are tremendous – immaculately performed and full of feeling. We ache for them to continue.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: If only the show itself was able to match this energy. Unfortunately, though, it's a depressingly lifeless affair, which somehow manages to be both overstated and underpowered. This, it should be emphasised, is in no way the fault of the actors – neither Holland, who is fine, nor Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, playing Juliet, who is better than fine, nor the supporting cast. The problem lies firmly with the gimmicky, oppressively dour staging, which consistently works against all of them.

Patrick Marmon, The Daily Mail: The play is famously preoccupied with death and Lloyd makes the most of that, with a cast dressed in black jeans, T-shirts and hoodies. It’s monotone, monochrome and mannered. If you took the production’s pulse, you might be tempted to call a priest. Sometimes, it even feels as if Lloyd is deliberately trying to throttle the life out of the febrile passion that normally drives this headlong love story. 

Tim Bano, The Independent: If it had ended at the interval, it would have been brilliant. Instead, it becomes a thing of diminishing returns. Second-half scenes are too effortful, some have no emotional impact. As for the ending, well, it’s a bit of a letdown. They die, but theatrically: earpieces out, eyes closed, sitting on the front of the stage like bouncers having a nap after a long shift at a warehouse rave.

Clive Davis, The Times: Did Tom Holland’s army of fans feel short-changed? The USP of this latest Jamie Lloyd production is, after all, the opportunity to see one of the biggest stars of multiplex cinema in the flesh. All credit to the Brit who plays Spider-Man on the big screen for taking on the challenge of performing modern-dress Shakespeare in the West End. But given how much Lloyd enjoys using digital technology, Holland’s admirers may wonder why they spend a fair amount of the evening watching their idol on a screen.

Neil Norman, Express: A voguish young movie star, onstage cameras, microphones placed conspicuously around a bare stage as well as taped to the actors’ cheeks, smoke, blinding flashes of white light, a continuous background hum as of a trapped hornet - how quickly the trademarks of a Jamie Lloyd production have become clichéd and predictable.

Sam Marlowe, The Stage: We expect the unexpected from a Jamie Lloyd production, and true to form, the director’s take on Shakespeare’s tragedy of doomed teenage love disrupts and repossesses the familiar story. Some of the techniques that Lloyd employed in his recent, stunning staging of Sunset Boulevard are here: there’s a starry lead performance, in this case from Spider-Man’s Tom Holland as Romeo; a dark, stark aesthetic; and extensive use of live video footage, some of it shot offstage. This time, though, the intention behind the concept is sometimes unclear, and while at its best it heightens the rush of hormonal emotion that drives the drama, elsewhere it has a distancing effect, jolting us out of the narrative and leaving us puzzled as to what exactly this most ingenious of theatremakers is up to. Still – and this is a fundamental on which far too many Shakespearean productions fall down – it’s certainly never boring.

Hugh Montgomery, BBC: If only the show itself was able to match this energy. Unfortunately, though, it's a depressingly lifeless affair, which somehow manages to be both overstated and underpowered. This, it should be emphasised, is in no way the fault of the actors – neither Holland, who is fine, nor Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, playing Juliet, who is better than fine, nor the supporting cast. The problem lies firmly with the gimmicky, oppressively dour staging, which consistently works against all of them.

Sarah Hemming, Financial Times: Even so, this is a compelling production: vivid, sad, restless. It brings home forcefully — and perhaps this is its point in today’s world — that death is not romantic. We’re left with the empty senselessness of five young lives needlessly snuffed out. 

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