The warring Houses of Montague and Capulet are resurrected in the wild west, with the star-crossed lovers in cowboy boots, gingham and Stetsons. Director Sean Holmes’s high concept production might have been preposterous and, initially, the idea speaks louder than the play, but by turns it woos, bewitches and becomes irresistible.
Romeo (Rawaed Asde) and his brawling compatriots wear holsters while Tybalt (Calum Callaghan) is referred to as something of a lone ranger. There is a blood-smear – as visual foreshadowing – at the back of Paul Wills’s incredibly handsome clapboard set, which has a Shaker-like simplicity: three swinging saloon-bar doors and an upstairs window which opens to a band of musicians that includes a harmonica and banjo player.
More outlandishly, there are clear comic elements, with a light, funny lilt to many of the lines. Juliet’s nurse (Jamie-Rose Monk) is like a rambunctious Wife of Bath; Paris (Joe Reynolds) is like a musical hall clown and Benvolio (Roman Asde) wears a Chaplinesque hat.
Juliet (Lola Shalam) looks like Calamity Jane and speaks like a bored teenager, in an emphatically stolid, London twang. Yet her broadness works, alongside the inner steel she shows to have later on.
The comic bonhomie feels ungrounding at first but its heartiness does not grate against the central tragedy. Juliet turns giggly with Romeo and their relationship is sweet, callow, bearing the single-minded ardour of young love.
It seems flagrantly to be a crowd-pleasing production with aims to reach a young audience but that mission does not undermine the text or patronise its older audience. And the frontier backdrop fits surprisingly well into Shakespeare’s fractious Verona. The masked ball features period line-dancing, there is tension to the brawls and shootouts, as daggers are drawn from the hip, as well as pistols.
It is not without its flaws: some actors declaim lines, flattening away the nuance. Rawaed Asde as Romeo certainly brings intensity but every line is spoken in the same determined tone, so that he seems perpetually incensed. Mercutio is over-animated too, albeit entertainingly playing to the audience.
It is also long – far closer to three hours than the two stated in the text. And yet you can’t begrudge it. The last hour is immaculate in its execution. The dead rise, eerily, and sometimes speak. The ghost of Mercutio delivers news of Juliet’s death to Romeo here. The final act is stark for all the earlier laughter. For a while it stands in the balance but, ultimately, here is a rare production where high concept meets high-class execution.
