It's
not only the gold Nike Airs that dazzle in Sally Cookson's new production of Romeo + Juliet at the Rose Theatre
Kingston. The cast are positively aglow with kinetic energy in this contemporary dress production of one of the most universal love stories. Cookson succeeds in reinvigorating the play in a way that rivals
even Baz Luhrmann's trailblazing 1996 film for freshness and flair.
This production daubs the whole cast in gold for a
trippy slow-motion ball dance, complete with glittering ski goggles. It kills
its female Mercutio with a hammer, and amalgamates Capulet and Lady Capulet
into one terrifyingly fiery matriarch. And it works. Cookson is known for taking
risks (her extraordinary Jane Eyre at
Bristol Old Vic and Hetty Feather at
the Rose are two recent examples) and even to more traditional theatre-goers who
may not have a taste for this particular interpretation of Shakespeare, it
should be clear that she does so with consummate pizazz. The quirks and modern
twists do not feel forced or extraneous, but fuse together to create a
production of great intensity and contemporary resonance.
From the Prologue spoken in unison to the synchronised
physical theatre touches – the cast moves as one like a viscous, globuled mass
surrounding Juliet while she tries to break out to reach Romeo – this feels
like an incredibly tight production. Every actor brings a real vigour to
their character that makes the theatre hum with life. By the time you hear Juliet
(the effervescent Audrey Brisson) scream with feral wildness as she realises
Romeo's body is lifeless upon her, your own body feels equally consumed by
their passion. Sharon D Clarke's superb Caribbean Nurse is a kind, simple soul whose love for her
young charge spills over into an astonishing, heartrending song of lamentation when she
believes Juliet is dead. And the true potency of Shakespeare's words is
palpable in every line in the play – I have never before felt simultaneously so
immersed in the emotion of the story and so fully able to appreciate the
virtuosic poetry as it is spoken on stage.
There is something about this production that feels
truly wired – as if it has been pumped full of caffeine and spun on its head
(in a breakdance move that would be entirely in keeping with the mood of the
play). Cookson has found a new dynamism in the plight of these lovers that is allowed to
pulse freely in Katie Sykes’s brutalist set and Aideen Malone’s spunky lighting.
Benji Bower's score eeks out eerie, beautiful synths and live melodies across
each scene, and leaves space for all-important silence to breathe a further ecstatic
tension into the air. It is hard to fault this interpretation of such a familiar
play, apart from perhaps too ardent a paring back of the script in places (for
example, replacing Juliet's final speech, in which she hopes that ‘Haply poison yet doth
hang’ on Romeo’s cold lips, entirely with actions feels somehow unsatisfying).
In Romeo’s visit to Juliet on their wedding night, in
the wake of his killing her cousin Tybalt, I have never seen such an authentic expression
of the conflicted emotions Juliet would feel at that moment. Joseph Drake
(Romeo) and Audrey Brisson join together in a lustful, recoiling dance that
leads them – desperate, tussling, weaving in rapturous agony – across the many
levels of the set. Juliet pushes hard against Romeo's chest as if both to
reject and to seize his heart. And you leave the Rose feeling as if your own
heart has been equally pummelled, as the play is reconstituted and recharged to
deliver its final blows of love and loss with an irresistible, bodily power.
