Writer: William Shakespeare, adapted by Kwame Owusu<\/b><\/p>\n
Directors: Emily Ling Williams and Malik Nashad Sharpe<\/b>
The prologue to Romeo and Juliet is one of the best-known of Shakespearean passages. It contains a reference to the play\u2019s duration as \u201cthe two hours\u2019 traffic of our stage,\u201d but it\u2019s rare for a modern performance to honour that time limit. It is remarkable, then, that Kwame Owusu\u2019s sleek adaptation manages to pack everything into a 90-minute, interval-free thrill ride \u2013 and still have time left over for several dance sequences.<\/p>\n
This production sprinkles a handful of professional actors among young artists and community performers, in a collaboration between the community and participation teams at both Stratford East and Sadler\u2019s Wells. The action mainly takes place in a Verona that\u2019s bustling with nightlife, where everybody hangs out at the dance club known as Cap\u2019s Bar (ruled over by Natasha Lewis\u2019s fiery Lady Capulet) and the post-party fast food is served in the Montagues\u2019 place, Monty\u2019s Taco Bar. Liam Bunster\u2019s design makes heavy use of roll-up shutters in its industrial aesthetic, exposing and hiding key set details as needed.<\/p>\n
It is in this landscape that Dhruv Bhudia\u2019s earnestly romantic Romeo first gatecrashes a Cap\u2019s Bar party, hoping to find Rosaline but finding his destiny in her cousin Juliet (Shakira Paulas) instead. The nightclub setting, already established in the play\u2019s opening as the location for Act I\u2019s opening thumb-biting confrontation, allows for co-director Malik Nashad Sharpe\u2019s ensemble choreography work to involve the whole company fully. Styles from ballroom and street repertoires mix with disco moves to emphasise the general party spirit.<\/p>\n
And yet those segments are not the most impressive dance moments. Whenever\u00a0Bhudia and Paulas are wooing each other, we get a second Romeo and Juliet in the form of dancers Louis Donovan and Praeploy Pam Tomuan. Their graceful, romantic pas de deux routines express the couple\u2019s inner thoughts \u2013 Rodgers and Hammerstein would be proud to see their use of dream ballets echoed so effectively here.<\/p>\n
Mixing such contemporary trappings with Shakespearean dialogue is no easy task; the ease and haste with which marriages can be arranged and performed sit uneasily with a 21st-century London vibe. So too, the arcane dialogue occasionally stumbles in the mouths of its young performers. While Bhudia excels at allowing the Shakespearean language to inhabit his character, especially in his many scenes with Michael Grady-Hall\u2019s Brother Laurence, Paulas\u2019s Juliet is not always able to achieve the same sense of accomplishment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the young lovers do work well together, and help to lead this cast of mixed abilities, training and background to a creation of Romeo and Juliet that speaks to both the playwright\u2019s era and the times in which it is performed. With the production topped and tailed by Louise Rowe\u2019s DJ giving us that famous prologue \u2013 first as warning, then as elegy \u2013 Owusu delivers a dynamic, fulfilling adaptation. It makes one wonder if any production should ever take up, much less exceed, those promised two hours ever again.<\/p>\n
Runs until 9 August 2025<\/b>
\t\t\tThe Reviews Hub Star Rating<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t80%<\/p>\n
\t\t\tDynamic, dance-infused tragedy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer: William Shakespeare, adapted by Kwame Owusu Directors: Emily Ling Williams and Malik Nashad Sharpe The prologue to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,118389,118390,393,4884,118391,118392,257,118393,118394,118395,118396,118397,118398,6080,118399,118400,118401,16,15,8820],"class_list":{"0":"post-328936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-dhruv-bhudia","10":"tag-emily-ling-williams","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-kwame-owusu","14":"tag-liam-bunster","15":"tag-london","16":"tag-louis-donovan","17":"tag-louise-rowe","18":"tag-malik-nashad-sharpe","19":"tag-michael-grady-hall","20":"tag-natasha-lewis","21":"tag-praeploy-pam-tomuan","22":"tag-review","23":"tag-romeo-and-juliet","24":"tag-shakire-paulas","25":"tag-stratford-east","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom","28":"tag-william-shakespeare"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114995398239740368","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}