Review: Romeo and Juliet

Jo Emery's Pump House Theatre Company production of Romeo and Juliet is a real treat. The simple set, comprising of a metal bin and two towers of stage blocks manage to become everything from town square benches and garden walls to the infamous Juliet balcony. Transported away from Verona to somewhere outside London (Watford perhaps?) the focus is not on stage wizardry but on character and relationship, and the storytelling is all the richer for it.

The relationship between Romeo, Benvolio and Mercutio is absolutely wonderful. The moment you see them together you totally believe their friendship and it feels like they’re a trio who have been knocking about together for years. Romeo, played by Harry Miller, is the eager puppy of the group, obsessively excited by every new discovery and quick to forget former passions. His raffish wide eyed charm makes complete sense of the ease with which Juliet replaces Rosalind in his affections. Dashingly handsome in stylish skinny jeans, Juliet's sudden infatuation is easily believed. 

Benvolio, played by Christopher Vincent, is the gentle peace maker, occasionally bold enough to make a saucy joke but mostly a willing and necessary audience to his friends' more agile wits. One feels that without him Romeo and Mercutio would endlessly frustrate one another.

Which leaves Mercutio himself, the shapeshifting clown, played to perfection by Cat Harper. She inhabits a catalogue of disparate characters at break-neck speed, with the agility and precision of the much missed Robin Williams. With a shuffle of her feet or a twist of her wrist she transforms from a horse to a drunkard, from a squirrel to a sex pest, and all with such precision that there’s never any doubt of the exact image she wishes to project. In her telling, every line of Queen Mab made perfect sense, and her disintegration at the end of the speech foreshadows a sinister darkness in her soul. Her movements ranged from the buffoonish to the balletic, and I felt there was something inherently feminine in that dance-like quality. Although apparently a man in the story, with gags about fiddlesticks very much intact, in my mind Harper's Mercutio was irrefutably a woman. Dressed in a black vest and cargo trousers like a member of 90s girl band All Saints, she gave a truly mercurial Mercutio, who completely captivates the audience's imagination.

Jo Emery not only directs this production but also adapted the script, skilfully cutting away unnecessary distraction so the narrative can focus sharply on the young couple in love. And they certainly feel young, with their faces frequently buried behind smartphone screens and vital communications taking place on video chat. 

However, what particularly moved me in this production was the plight of Juliet, sensitively played by Poppy Zavazi. While Romeo is all energy and bounce, pacing the stage and auditorium, desperately displaying his heart on his sleeve, Juliet is much more caged, emotionally and socially. Trapped by a patriarchal society in which even the female characters reassert male dominance, she rarely gets the chance to be as open and honest as her paramour. Almost everything she says drips with irony or double meaning as she carefully tries to navigate a world in which she is seen as the property of her father, a gift he can bestow upon Paris with no regard to her consent.

The Nurse (Wendy Moir) and Friar Lawrence (Roger Saper) both provide moments of comic relief, with Moir in particular filling the stage with a matronly, giggling effervescence. Her shift from a louder than life chatterbox to a subdued witness of her ward's dismal end really drives home the tragedy of the play.

As with Baz Luhrman's groundbreaking film version, music is cleverly used throughout to create moods and contexts. Whilst most of the cast project wonderfully into the auditorium, some battle to be heard over background soundscapes like the bustle of a market or church bells, sounds which could perhaps be faded down once the scene is established.

Overall, a sensitive and fast-paced Romeo and Juliet for the 2020s, reminding us of the timeless nature and the intoxicating innocence of young love.