Lucky Brits got to view the National Theatre’s Romeo and Juliet earlier in April. The rest of us had to wait until the Bard’s 457th birthday on April 23 to catch it on PBS’s Great Performances. This scrupulously edited but potent production was filmed last year during lockdown; here, the absence of an audience, as well as the theatre’s industrial-strength darkness, played key roles in the stagecraft of Shakespeare’s most enduring love story. I’ve long been a fan of National Theatre Live productions and scurry to my local theatre every time one comes near my tiny midwestern hamlet. The creative use of space and staging is sometimes distractingly brilliant, as we saw in the Cumberbatch/Miller swaparoony Frankenstein. During lockdown, I’ve watched Hiddleston’s Coriolanus five times just to binge on Josie Rourke’s exquisite use of the of the Donmar Warehouse and I’ve marveled at the NT Live presentation of the Young Vic’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof*. The first thing I did during lockdown was to subscribe to National Theatre’s NT @ Home and it was money well spent. Live theatre isn’t the same on a small screen or any screen. But Simon Godwin, director of the National Theatre’s “filmed” R & J, navigated the gap between live theatre and film, reminding me why I became a Bardolator in the first place.
What Worked
· The scene between Juliet (Jessie Buckley and her stern Irish dialect) and Lady Capulet (Tamsin Grieg and her sculptured face) from Act 3, scene 5 where Lady Capulet insists on Juliet’s impending marriage to Paris. Grieg’s intensity in that scene is all the more crafted because she never raises her voice. Staging that scene with a precise intimacy and quiet worked on film in ways it might not have in a larger theatrical setting.
· The kiss between Mercutio (Fisayo Akinade) and Benvolio (Shubham Saraf). Mercutio is often played as Queer, in some or all senses of that word. Once again in this staging, reminiscent of Harold Perrineau’s Mercutio from Luhrmann’s 1996 film version, Romeo’s best friend steals the show but this time, in the quiet embrace he and Benvolio enjoy before Mercutio curses both of their houses.
· Josh O’Connor nailed the fickle shift of Romeo’s brooding obsession with Rosaline to his sudden passion for Buckley’s budding Juliet. Neither of them smacked of the tortured teen angst that gave DiCaprio and Danes a special place in my heart as the star-crossed lovers. But the extra character in the play, as noted by Emily Burns, the brains behind this adaptation, is the SPACE these lovers inhabit. The light, the dance, the warehouse door of Romeo’s banishment, combined to produce a controlled and confined staging, pushing Shakespeare’s dynamic language of love, sex, and family dysfunction squarely center stage, which is precisely where it should be.
*Jack O’Connell’s Brick is the best Brick. Ever. Period. He is captivating in the role and if you ever have a chance to watch this 2018 NT Live staging of Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece, stop what you’re doing and admire the living shit out of Jack O’Connell (Little Fish, Unbroken, Seberg, and others).