Romeo + Juliet, Circle in the Square, NYC

 I had been talking about another trip to New York, and so when this new production of Romeo and Juliet was announced, it was the perfect excuse.   With Broadway virgins Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler in the leads, Sam Gold, the love him or hate him director at the helm,  and Jack Antonoff, the show off/genius music producer in charge of original score, it could all go spectacularly wrong or be brilliant.  I booked the tickets before anything else, and then realised that meant I was going to have to go back to NYC for the second time in a year. 

I usually prefer not to read reviews before seeing any play, but it previewed for a month, and given the amount of Tik-tok excitement it's not surprising that many of the more unusual features were heavily spoilered beforehand.

The play is a fresh, young take on the well known story.  Walking in the theatre foyer, there is loud disco music and flashing lights to set the scene and that continues inside the intimate performance space, with a tiny circular stage, and only about 15 rows of seats surrounding the stage, all with excellent views.  The cast are on stage warming up for about 10 minutes before the performance, dancing and messing about.  The fourth wall is broken multiple times through this performance and I think it works really well with the framing devices included in Shakespeare's original.  The performers are all introduced to us over a mike and with driving music as a backdrop to whoops and cheers, telling us who is going to play each character, hyping up the audience before we start, with a break to silence as they drop into role.  The script is edited, and some characters are excised, but the text remains largely unchanged.  There are some moments that have been widely hyped, such as Kit Connor's pull up for the balcony scene, and although I had already seen it, it still hit as it should as a really powerful moment showing the drive that these young people have to be together.  The staging is deceptively simple, with a bed/platform that is dropped and raised at various stages, and then there is the stunning opening of the stage to become a flower bed as Romeo declares his love.  The rest of the theatre is used fully, with the cast using all the aisles and exits, and at one crucial point, asking to take the seat of a front row audience member.  The first half finds all of the laughs and sexual innuendo to be found, and does it with style.  After a very short interval the play opens again  with the cast gathering on stage before there is a break back into character and the drama and tension unfolds.

Kit Connor's performance has been rightly noted as the stand out of the show.  He is engaging, passionate, with great comic timing, and managed to make the rollercoaster of emotions that Romeo experiences all absolutely believable and I found his performance really moving. I think he has a great future ahead of him and I can't wait to see what he does next.  I didn't know Rachel Zegler very well, having only seen her as Maria in the latest West Side Story.  The two songs she is given are not really relevant to moving the story along,  and there was already no doubt she is a great singer but here she also showed her acting skill, doing a good job in showing both the flightiness and determination of Juliet to have this boy she has just met and fallen in love with.  

It's worth saying that this version does not have a demure couple - they clearly fancy the pants off each other, making that pull up to the balcony to steal a kiss and the bedroom scene all the more powerful, and that helps when we are asked to believe the grim ending they face.

The rest of the cast all double up roles.  Stand out for me was Gaby Beans as The Friar/Mercutio/The Prince.  She's a powerful performer who holds the stage as soon as she speaks.  And I liked the way she handled the character changes.  On one occasion though she simply says 'I'm the Friar now' which got a big laugh in the room.  I liked that Sola Fadiran played both Capulet and Lady Capulet - there's a stand out where they are arguing with each other which was a lot of fun, as well as showing that the only parental influence available is toxic. And Tommy Dorfman doubling as both the Nurse and Tybalt worked really well too as the catalyst that both facilitates them getting together and then being broken apart.  I'd be interested to see what she does next too.

So, what about the criticism that this is just Shakespeare lite for the Tik-tok generation?  Well in many ways they are not wrong, but I think it is a strength.  If some of the ensemble cast are not getting the iambic pentameter absolutely spot on I don't think it matters; the sense always comes through. This is a play about impetuous young people, with absent adults, left to their own devices.  The adults are taking their feud seriously, but the kids are playing (the kiss in the middle of that first scuffle shows that they don't really mean it).  Whenever adults hove into view it is to control, patronise, or in Capulet's case to show that he isn't interested in his daughter at all.  All of this comes through very well through this production. To this older person it feels young, with the dj, music, dancing and lighting as a backdrop, and then the cast are all believeable as young people left to their own devices,  having fun, falling in love, fighting, with no sensible adult supervision at all.  It's not surprising when disaster strikes.  

I love a new take on Shakespeare, and this version is passionate, energetic and powerful, and as intended, it feels to me to be a version for todays youth, much as the Lurhmann version was in the '90s.