Shakespeare’s Globe, London
Director Ola Ince’s take on Shakespeare’s tragedy is clever, energetic and doesn’t have a single smooch
This is not the first major production of Romeo and Juliet in this pandemic year. Simon Godwin set the standard with his exquisite film hybrid and several others have similarly envisaged Verona in a modern landscape. What more can this latest staging bring us?
Certainly not much romance: this is a production without a single smooch. More irreverently, the love story is radically undercut and Ola Ince’s production is recalibrated to focus on Verona’s pervading social sickness and gang violence (there are not only knives but drugs and guns) as well as youth disillusionment and trauma.
