Romeo and Juliet is a play that lives or dies by the speed of its execution. Directors are best off ignoring the Friar’s observation “they stumble that run fast” and Ellie Hurt rightly puts pedal to the metal in her vigorous production. Not for nothing is Zoe West’s Romeo wearing Nike trainers.
The first act is breathtaking, the adrenaline sustained right from the opening brawl through to the Capulets’ ball. Romeo’s reflections on Rosaline with Benvolio (Kelise Gordon-Harrison) are fizzier than usual; the Nurse (Ebony Feare) is hurried out of giving her lament for Susan; and instead of trying to calm tempers, Joe Alessi’s hard-nut Capulet is ready to glass Tybalt (Milo McCarthy) with a bottle of bubbly. As the party rages, Mercutio (Elliot Broadfoot) grabs the mic to reprise lines from the Queen Mab speech like it’s a dance anthem, Mab’s drumming of a soldier’s ear turned into clubby beats.
When Juliet (Alicia Forde) and Romeo find themselves alone together, everything grinds to a halt and the stage at last falls silent. Their shared sonnet is delivered tenderly yet with a wholly realistic adolescent awkwardness. Teenage viewers who find the delicate wooing of rhyming couplets unrelatable may take heart from this Romeo’s drunken belch beforehand – and recognise the mutual blushes and hesitant touches that follow. Then the giddiness of their first kiss propels the play onwards again, with a beautifully managed balcony scene fired by nervous excitement. There’s a fresh realism given, too, to Romeo’s discovery of his new love’s identity: “Is she a Capulet? Oh for fuck’s sake!”
The streamlined text and dramaturgy by Tommo Fowler add to the pace, as do Dom Coyote’s compelling music and Sascha Gilmour’s unfussy, split-level set. The first prologue takes place as if in the tomb, the cast forming a chorus who carry vials, and the lovers’ death bed remains on stage throughout. The usual extraneous characters and speeches are excised (alas poor Balthasar!) but so too are the roles of Lady Capulet and Romeo’s parents altogether. Those are somewhat compensated by the Nurse and the Friar but you lose a sense of broader familial tragedy, as well as the elder generation’s implication in the cycle of violence. The slashed dramatis personae also reduces the effect of bustling households at war.
The violence, sometimes accompanied by KJ’s strobe lighting, needs a little more edge although it is an inspired move to intercut Tybalt and Mercutio’s deaths with Juliet’s forceful “Gallop apace” soliloquy for added dynamism. This Tybalt is not an outlandish Prince of Cats but seems grimly committed to an inherited hatred he does not fully comprehend. McCarthy doubles as a dim, deluded Paris while Alessi makes a callous Capulet (given many of his absent wife’s lines) who is dripped in bling and overly concerned with status. The care for these young lovers comes from Feare’s playful Nurse and the practical Friar (Eithne Browne) as well as a soothing chorus who repurpose phrases from speeches into song lyrics.
Hurt’s timings are on point until the end, as Juliet awakes to see Romeo’s drugs take hold – a scene that brings to bear all of the vulnerability and devotion in West and Forde’s performances throughout. They’re a dream pairing in an often enthralling, intelligent and accessible show.
• At Everyman theatre, Liverpool, until 4 October
