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Shakespeare's Intimacies


So on Tuesday this week I went to see Romeo and Juliet, as performed by the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company. It had some amazing cast members - Lily James, Richard Madden and the pure brilliance of Derek Jacobi - and it was really enjoyable! In fact I think I had more of a smile on my face coming out, than I did when I saw Cumberbatch in Hamlet last October. But..I don't think it was the most outstanding piece of theatre I've seen.

As a play R+J is performed across the world, in schools, in the West End, in gardens with children and in blockbuster films. And not only is it one of the most well known of Shakespeare's plays but it also inspires many piece of storytelling with its story of love through enmity and its tragic (but terribly romantic) ending.


The problem, because of this history, is that it's hard to maintain an original telling of R+J, it's hard to take the traditional play and give it a fairly traditional outing in a theatre without people saying they've seen it before. And this is kind of what I'm saying, I had seen it before, I didn't feel like Branagh was breaking any ground with his interpretation. But what I'm not saying is this was a bad thing. In fact the more I've pondered on my enjoyment of the play the more I've come to realising how glad I was to see it in a setting that made sense. We were in Verona, where Italian was thrown about just as much as Shakespearean verse and the piazza like set had a beautiful colonnade that adapted to each scene it needed to (no way to get a picture and wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone).

I also absolutely love that Lily James played a Juliet that was not yet 14 (much more accurate to the writing) and that the love-forlorn Romeo was teased for his intense fickleness about Rosaline. And despite not being teenagers themselves James and Madden portrayed the suddenness and intensity of first adolescent love with the right amount of drama and humour mixed in.

I'm not going to say it was the best Shakespeare I've even seen, but I am going to say that any negativities from its traditional take are outweighed by the pure joy of seeing good acting and good directing bring a well known and well loved play back on to the West End.

Taran x 
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