★★★★☆
Am I, I wonder aloud to myself, allowed to spoil Romeo and Juliet? The timorous instinct within me leans towards no. Which is ridiculous. The play tells you what’s going to happen on the eighth line.
But still, at every performance of the bard’s most famous play, someone in the audience will gasp as Juliet wakes just in time to see Romeo (spoiler alert) off himself. From personal experience, I can tell you Rebecca Frecknall’s new staging at the Almeida is no different.
Delightfully surprised audience members aside, the difficulty in making the most ubiquitous love story in the English language feel fresh is a problem every production has to push through. Frecknall takes a nicely literal solution to the problem. Beginning the play with the “in fair Verona” monologue projected, not spoken, onto an imposing stone wall, the cast assemble to push the edifice over, forming the stage con which the rest of the play is set.
It’s an effective mission statement. Combined with a smart overlapping of scenes and a focus on physicality, the director has given Romeo and Juliet a trendy, kinetic feel to produce a rock-solid adaptation, if not a spectacular one.
Romeo and Juliet – Toheeb Jimoh and Isis Hainsworth (photo: Marc Brenner)
As ever, buzz is inevitably drawn to the duo playing the lucky couple, and Isis Hainsworth and Toheeb Jimoh succeed on both accounts. Jimoh is just as charming here as he is in Apple TV’s Ted Lasso. A puppyish ball of lovesick energy, his Romeo is more likeable than most by far. Hainsworth, as Juliet, adds a more innocent insecurity to counteract the whirlwind opposite. Like the production as a whole, neither reinvents their parts completely, but both trod familiar ground very well.
It helps that the literal ground they’re treading is very pretty. Chloe Lamford’s stage design is deceptively simple, and more elegant for it. It’s impressive what someone can do with a few lights and the odd candle. The soundscape, similarly, is uncluttered but effective, punctuating the action with a suitable gravitas.
It’s in this action that the play really comes alive, and is probably the reason d’ etre for this production. Frecknall’s dance background and fight director Jonathan Holby have made a moving landscape that adds a healthy vigour to Shakespeare’s text. For a play so indebted to youthful passion, it seems unthinkable that so few interpretations have historically followed their lead.
READ MORE: Patriots review | An uneven portrait of a terrifying period
In fact, when the movement stops for longest is when the production noticeably lags. A long stretch after a certain, er, murdery bit feels oddly static compared to the action on either side. Perhaps it’s because the dancing transitions work so well that without them the show feels like it’s losing momentum.
But even without them, it’s hard to argue with a bit of great Shakespeare done well. When everyone knows the destination, it’s the journey that matters the most. At the Almeida, Romeo and Juliet treads with a sure foot.
Romeo and Juliet is playing at the Almeida Theatre until 29 July.
