Juliet & Romeo | Adelaide Festival 2022 review

The lovers no longer star-crossed, but jaded after many years of marriage, their suicides having been a ruse.

Juliet & Romeo. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Juliet & Romeo

Theatre – UK

ADELAIDE FESTIVAL

Scott Theatre

Until March 12

UK theatre maker Ben Duke and his Lost Dog company’s first foray into the “embodiment” (his term) of classics on stage was Milton’s Paradise Lost, a solo take on a poem that truly lived up to its epic reputation, blending music, dance and drama in a unique, and uniquely effective, way.

So when he announced a two-hander of the world’s most famous love story, expectations ran high.

Enter Juliet & Romeo. The order is deliberate, and the premise provocative. For here we have the lovers no longer star-crossed, but jaded after many years of marriage in far-off Paris, whither they eloped, their suicides having been a ruse.

The lights don’t go down as they enter, for the audience is engaged in couples counselling and for what seems like an age, we’re invited to enter into their relationship.

It’s a conceit, to be sure, but this alternate reality is deeply persuasive.

Juliet is in the driver’s seat. It is she who commissions a play based on their journey, or her version of it.

It is she who encapsulates strength and power, yet also fear and insecurity. It is she who suffers in childbirth, with its all-too-frequent depression and loneliness. For her money, this whole romance caper might just be a myth.

The first part of the piece is a rose-tinted affair, with all the happy bits of the Bard’s original. As they first fall into each other’s arms – to Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence, one of many love songs that sardonically punctuate the work – Romeo struts like a peacock, hugely funny, so much so that the audience is simply compelled to break the rules and laugh their collective heads off.

A long time later, though, when Romeo tries to rekindle the spark, Juliet watches on, bored to sobs if not actually scornful, munching popcorn.

He is thwarted, and not for the first time.

The performers, Solène Weinachter and Kip Johnson, are terrific in every respect, fabulous dancers, and with the dramatic chops to give Duke’s witty and incisive script scale and focus that’s in the big league. As are both they and this excellent production.