Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare's Globe (review)
Review by Oli Burley
SOARING divorce rates remind us that fractured love is no past pain, which is why the angst of Romeo and Juliet still resonates strongly today.
Despair is what Romeo (Adetomiwa Edun) does best in Dominic Dromgoole’s production at the Globe, which kicks off this summer’s Young Hearts season.
The prospect of his forced separation from prim Juliet (Ellie Kendrick) yields a bawling, sprawling desolation that resonates with the broken-hearted, past or present.
This fervour comes as a relief because new love doesn’t hang so well on this rather too smug Romeo.
He dumps Rosaline for Juliet deftly enough, deserting old desire for young affection with business-like efficiency, diluting the emotional economy of his early lines in the process.
Yet his ardour never develops beyond brusque: there are limits to his longing, his carefree abandon is curtailed and Verona is right to regard him as virtuous rather than blithe.
Kendrick (BBC’s Anne Frank) is driven and determined as Juliet and her sometime monotone delivery unnervingly captures the uncertain space she finds herself in, between child and wife.
The dallying of her nurse, the diverting Penny Layden, is not for her and despite being 18 years of age Kendrick’s performance is proficient enough to help break the ice around the refectory tables when she starts studying at Cambridge after her gap year.
She is one of three actors making their professional stage debuts in this production and an unfailing energy emanates from the well-blended cast in the opening acts of the play.
Jack Farthing’s Benvolio prances and postures entertainingly, (albeit sometimes to the detriment of his voice), and Philip Cumbus delivers the standout display as Mercutio, whose bawdiness and bravado drive the play forward.
This youthful zest finds sharp contrast in the iron-fist authority of Prince Escalus (Andrew Vincent) and Ian Redford’s commanding Capulet.
His red-faced rage and utter irritation at Juliet’s insubordination is a ‘stand up and applaud’ moment, a tirade borne of frustrated fatherhood and a lesson in passionate performance.
As ever at the Globe there are some diverting cameos – none more so than Fergal McElherron’s electric, overgrown gnome of a servant – and an accompanying score that simply spoils the patrons.
Along the way the Codpiece Quartet sing of the wealth of love and while marriage may be in decline in the United Kingdom, you barely have to step outside of the Globe to see new Romeos and Juliets experiencing that richness for the first time and comprehend why this is the most consummate of William Shakespeare’s works.