Persil washes whiter. That was the slogan that came to my mind as I looked at Jenny Tiramani's extraordinary choice of costumes for this summer production in the 16th century hall of the Middle Temple by Theatre of Memory, a company many of whom have been previously associated with Shakespeare's Globe. The actors are all in white and a month of laundry bills lies ahead. The young blades are all in knee-length shorts just like the ones that Rafa Nadal wears at Wimbledon, though some have 'Montague' in sequins sewn on their behinds. Most of the other male characters are also in a variety of high-fashion shorts, some with lacy diaphanous shirts and many of them have jaunty white panama hats. The lower orders wear white berets. For a moment I wasn't sure if I was at Wimbledon or on a pelota court somewhere in the Basque country. Juliet wears a little girl's Barbie doll dress with a tutu, and the Nurse a white coat that reminded me irresistibly of what Hattie Jacques used to wear as matron in the Carry On films. Jenny Tiramani rightly won an Olivier award (I voted for her!) in 2002 for her 'original practices' costumes at Shakespeare's Globe, but in this production her imagination has been left to run riot and the result distracts attention from the play.
Possibly if the acting and the production were stronger, I wouldn't be writing so much about the costumes. Though this is a fantastic venue for Shakespearean theatre, with great acoustics, I can't help feeling that this production falls well short of the last Romeo and Juliet I saw, by the student company of the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS). It's unusual to find an amateur production that puts the professionals to shame, but I don't think I'm being perverse. I'm a big fan of the Shakespeare's Globe approach to theatre, and my interest is always aroused when the name Rylance appears anywhere in the programme. Mark Rylance's daughter Juliet plays her namesake with a teenager's hop skip and jump, at times sprinting around the stage, but I have to say that at no point is she convincing as a naive 14-year-old. That's the problem with Juliet; of all Shakespearean roles, it's the one most closely defined by age. The Bard never spells out how old Macbeth is supposed to be, or for that matter Beatrice and Benedict, but he spells out with enormous emphasis that Juliet is 14. That's a huge challenge for any actress in her late 20s. I suppose you're only as old as you feel, and it's not just a matter of appearance. In the OUDS production, Corinne Sawers (19 or 20 in real life but looking younger) expressed a real teenager's wide-eyed gauche innocence to perfection, but in this show Rylance comes over as far too adult and knowing. Perhaps Romeo isn't the first young man she's been snogging? Santiago Cabrera as Romeo simply doesn't have the tragic range for the part. He's a rising film and television star (Heroes) who hasn't appeared on stage for five years, and it shows. When he learns that Juliet is dead he looks like a tennis player who is mildly upset that he's lost his ball. With his dreamboat Latin good looks, I am sure he has a great future on the screen (perhaps in the next Pirates of the Caribbean if Orlando Bloom isn't available) but I don't see his Shakespeare career going anywhere.
Unlike in the OUDS production, there seems to be very little chemistry between Romeo and Juliet in this show. The bedroom scene is the least erotic I have ever seen, and I think director Tamara Harvey, rather than the actors, is to blame. A great Shakespearean director like Declan Donnellan can be unorthodox in his blocking and movement, but his choices are always inspired by a close study of the text and the need to extract every ounce of meaning from it. That's not the case here, and the result is often that the movement seems at odds with the words. When Juliet learns from the Nurse that Romeo has been banished, she stays rooted to the spot several yards away rather than running forward to learn more. The young bloods are well portrayed as a group, swaggering around and strutting about with a faintly homoerotic air, but as individuals they don't come alive. Again, the OUDS production managed this much better, using individualised costumes to help the actors stamp their own characters on each part. Perhaps Romeo and Juliet is a play in which all the polish and technique learned at drama school gets in the way; student actors who haven't been to RADA may not have the training to do a six-month run of a play, but for a few nights they can produce more natural, human performances. The OUDS production also scored highly on narrative drive by being cut to two hours, while this one lasts a full three. I was quite eager for the final whistle, I'm afraid.
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