The theatrical atmosphere has been heavily charged with arguments lately. Some of it is terrible. Shortly after announcing that Francesca Amewudah-Rivers had been cast as Juliet, alongside Tom Holland’s Romeo, the Jamie Lloyd Company released a statement explaining that she had been subjected to a “barrage” of racism and misogyny online. Strong support for Amewudah-Rivers, who is black, came quickly, in an open letter with more than 800 signatories. But what really crushes the pathetic bullies is her performance. She’s one of the best Juliets I’ve seen.
And what a production Romeo & Juliet from Lloyd, who shakes them by the scruff of the neck and continually turns expectations inside out. It’s a wonderfully young cast – Freema Agyeman’s cracklingly lively nurse is no cackling matron, but looks more like Anita in West Side Story; in his stage debut, Daniel Quinn-Toye brings wide-eyed pathos to hapless Paris – yet the dominant note is not exuberance but intensity. There is no climbing on balconies: part of the piece is spoken without movement. Battles are darkened (Jon Clark’s lighting is low, dim) so that there is nothing between the flash point and the result: blood-soaked vests and an inert figure. There’s no declamation, lots of intimate whispering (everyone is put on the microphone), but there’s never silence: sound design wizards Ben and Max Ringham send a drone throughout the action, a tone of constant, mild fear, sometimes accelerating the alarm with a drum beat.
No one is posh. Holland (who was Billy Elliot long before he was Spider-Man) is light but focused, not drenched in romance but slipping in and out of tears with ease. Amewudah-Rivers is radiant, energetic – it is she who initiates the first kiss – and perceptive: I have never heard of “What’s in a name?” watched with such amazement. Together they fizz, often humorously, punctuating the verse with 21st-century inflections: Romeo grins smugly when he hears him being praised; Juliet flirts as if she’s murmuring.
Just like in his production of Sunset BlvdLloyd follows the action with cameras and follows characters on and off stage. Not always profitable. There’s a magical cutaway to the Netherlands on the roof of the theater, in front of a neon sign spelling Mantua, but some of the close-ups detract from the intimacy of real people talking in the dark. Yet Romeo and Juliet are undiminished: not ‘cut into small stars’, but shining like big ones.
Graeae, the company founded to counter expectations of disabled artists, is preparing a production of Romeo and Juliet (Sept 13-Oct 26) with “a completely deaf, disabled and neurodivergent cast”. Meanwhile, The Globe’s artistic director Michelle Terry was greeted with a firestorm of protest when she announced she would star in Richard III. The Disabled Artists Alliance stated: “This role belongs to us. It is offensive and distasteful for Richard to be portrayed by someone outside the community.”
I have no visible or hidden disability. I like to think this doesn’t drastically curtail my sympathies, but it clearly shapes my perspective. It is clear to me that the stage has deprived itself of the talent of disabled actors. Still, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of a group of actors having exclusive rights to certain roles, and am more convinced that greater progress is made by routinely challenging the standard casting for each character. Before the attack on Lloyd’s production, I assumed it was taken for granted that white people (even Etonians) have no prior claim to directing Shakespearean roles. It seems not.
In fact, the accusation that Terry is faking a disability is false. She doesn’t limp or jump like Olivier. The text of Elle While’s production is stripped of references to crookedness and incomplete bodies: this is a drama about a charismatic bully. Of course there is loss – exploring the difficult relationship between Richard’s sense of physical disability and his character – but an important element is highlighted. The largely female production (Helen Schlesinger with cockatoo hair and a City suit is a silky Buckingham) emphasizes how time and again women, robbed at Richard’s hands, forced to be his bedfellow, tell the truth and go unheard.
Some strange Trump references are imported, unnecessarily but not in discord. Terry – puffy doublet, gold trousers, pale wig, small finger gestures – makes the parallels clear: the cajoling command of a crowd, the naked lies, the irritability, the brazen misogyny. Terry’s king is a deadly child. She outdoes everyone else in a stimulating, fragmented evening. Very globe. As rain dripped from the thatch of the roof, the ground dwellers gathered, wrapped like druids in their plastic ponchos.
Last week the Young Vic appointed a new artistic director: Nadia Fall, who now heads Stratford East, will take over from Kwame Kwei-Armah in January. Fall is from Southwark, with South Asian parents. Oh, and she’s not a guy. Slowly, London’s theaters are becoming less white and less male. But let’s not make any assumptions about the programming that will follow.
Strange passingThe musical by Stew Stewart and Heidi Rodewald, which was seen on Broadway in 2008 and is now having its European premiere, is about such assumptions. The title refers to Othello, whose exploits “passed strangely”, but also “passed by”. With a twist. The hero does not want to come across as white, but as a version of the black musician that everyone expects: “Do you play jazz… do you play blues?” A middle-class adolescent pretending to be from the ghetto, he leaves LA and a loving mother to, oh dear, end up in Europe, where he also has to reshape his own ideas about others. Liesl Tommy’s production features pop-up Amsterdammers and Berliners from the 80s – fluorescent Mohicans, torn fishing nets, performance work focusing on toilets – and an arc sketch about the Nouvelle Vague. Thank God they failed to reach the British.
There are smooth slides in the text: “a melody for every ailment” and a wonderfully relaxed, melodic performance by Giles (Hamilton) Terera. Yet the production never quite conveys the message of art versus life, while it emphatically makes it so. Over-amplified music makes the evening bloom, but not soar.
Star ratings (out of five)
Romeo & Juliet ★★★★
Richard III ★★★
Strange passing ★★★