Alongside A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet is surely one of Shakespeare’s most well-known
plays. Yet out of this gross familiarity comes a complacency borne of contempt
and over-saturation of two lovers drawn from feuding families, whose “misadventured
piteous overthrows / do with their death bury their parents’ strife.” Enter, then, Kip Williams, with his production of Romeo
and Juliet for Sydney Theatre Company. Tired of the age-old story of
two warring households, Williams has (boldly) shrunk the scale of the play’s
cast and scope to a mere ten players, focusing the story on Capulet, his
expectations for his daughter Juliet, and her own conflicting choices and desires;
how much of a toxic mix this is, then as now.
It’s a bold move,
and one that may very well set a cat among the pigeons, just as Tybalt explodes
amongst Romeo and his friends in the town square. Struck by the “underlying similarities”
between houses Capulet and Montague, Williams’ production gives us our own
world back at us, a world where “vacuous narcissism” and “old money” is “steeped
in unquestioned tradition.” A world where “violence is born of boredom, habit,
alcoholism and ego.” In doing so, he loses none of the play’s lyricism and
intoxicating poetry; in fact, his staging only serves to heighten it, and by
the end – almost three hours later – I dare you not to be left speechless in
your seat, the full weight of this spectacular, crisp, sharp production like Tybalt’s
knife in your gut.
