Romeo and Juliet, Almeida Theatre review ★★★★★

Fresh from the unqualified success of her multi award-winning productions of Cabaret and A Streetcar Named Desire, Rebecca Frecknall has now turned her attentions to the story of the 'star cross’d lovers' in a new production for the Almeida Theatre where she is associate director.

Perhaps the best known, certainly one of the best loved of Shakespeare’s prolific canon, the story of ‘Juliet and her Romeo’ poses one immediate problem to a director: how do you keep the public interested when they know the end before they even take their seats?

It’s a problem Rebecca Frecknall masters absolutely by distilling the essentials of the play into a tense, stripped-down-to-basics and unbroken two hours, with a forward momentum that propels the characters to their destiny and the audience along with them.

It starts with the 15-strong cast filing down the aisles towards a massive rough mud wall that stands before the stage, on which the play's opening words are projected: ‘Two households, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona, where we lay our scene…’

Romeo and Juliet Cast. Photo: Marc Brenner
Then the wall crashes down to become a bare stage (designer Chloe Lamford) lit by columns of spotlights at the back (lighting design Lee Curran). The sole functional prop is a ladder upstage right, leading to what will eventually become Juliet’s balcony.

The costumes exist in a nondescript out-of-time place, mostly modern day, for example Mercutio’s patched jeans, each with a small detail that points subtly towards Renaissance wear, for example, Juliet’s short black culottes, knee-high nylon socks and clumpy shoes are topped by a soft silver brocade vest (costume designer Debbie Duru).

What these choices do is concentrate the attention on Shakespeare’s glorious poetry, the way in which it tells the story and gives us fully rounded, very human characters, people we come to desperately care for.

Frecknall’s leads are ideally cast. Toheeb Jimoh’s Romeo is young, handsome with his impish smile, impulsive, and in love more with the idea of love than with ‘fair Rosaline’ whom he is pursuing until, of course, he comes upon Juliet at that fateful ball.

Romeo and Juliet. Isis Hainsworth and Toheeb Jimoh. Photo: Marc Brenner
Isis Hainsworth’s Juliet looks and acts the young teenager. She is innocent, yet suggests the yearning that bubbles just beneath the surface. A dutiful daughter, she's also wilful and capable of rebellion. And once gripped by passion, she becomes the feverish motor of the final tragedy.

The rest of the cast offer strong backing to the central story, with Jack Riddiford’s brawling Mercutio’s provocative vulgarity particularly effective in his confrontations with Jyuddah Jaymes’s thuggish Tybalt.

Jo McInnes’s Nurse shines as the one warm, loving figure in Juliet’s life.

The use of Prokofiev’s eponymous ballet score injects urgency and a sense of doom into the ensemble movement scenes.

The final image is that of the dead young lovers in the crypt lit by a myriad shimmering candles, an image of utter desolation that leaves us shattered at the injustice of it all.

Romeo and Juliet. Isis Hainsworth and Toheeb Jimoh. Photo: Marc Brenner

Just as Shakespeare surely intended.