Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet was performed at the Leper Chapel in North Cambridge in November 2008. This promenade production of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy was set in the 1940s era amidst the devastation of the Blitz.
While fathers fight for freedom across the Channel, their sons imitate them in war games that spiral out of control. Combining the raw violence and youthful energy of Shakespeare’s play with the melancholic music and fear-soaked atmosphere of 1940s Britain, an ensemble of nine captured the danger, passion and self-destruction of the original story.
The idea was solid – there’s a very clear perception of the Blitz era as being a sort of ‘golden age’ where communities got on, but I wanted, without showing any disrespect to those who lived through it, to question this. Surely the strains of such a context – of not knowing when the next bombing would come; not knowing whether you would see your son again; of suspecting your neighbour of taking extra rations. However, I don’t think we pushed the idea far enough – we should have changed the script entirely, updating all the dialogue, beautiful through Shakespeare’s language is.
The Leper Chapel, though, was a huge asset to the production. It’s a tiny space but the instant you walk into it you are transported to another world. We transformed it entirely: a scaffold was erected at one side of the space, with sandbags piled up beneath it for the actors to climb and sit on. Gas masks hung from the walls and a 1940s radio sat on a table. For the final scene, two screens at the end of the chapel were opened to reveal the altar, where Juliet lay, apparently dead.
Again, we seem to have a knack of choosing cold venues (the chapel only had two large fan heaters which had to be turned off during the performance because of the noise) and of making things difficult for ourself: we had to arrange everything, from lights to scaffolding to sets to costumes to dealing with not having a dressing room.
We had a mixed review in Varsity which largely concentrated on the uncomfortable seats, and more helpful feedback from the audience (see Graham McCann’s blog post on the show here). We seem to like putting on ambitious shows in very small spaces: there’s something thrilling and terrifying about putting your faith in the audience, about not being able to hide behind that awful, pretentious ‘fourth wall’. The Varsity was right about one thing, which is that in a small space there’s nowhere for the actors to hide. I like a challenge.
