[rating:3 stars]
Playing @ The Lyceum Theatre, 17 Sep to 16 Oct
Opposing sides living at odds with each other, forced to reconcile their differences when two of their members come together. No, we’re not referring to Cameron and Clegg and the Con/Dem coalition, but rather the Lyceum’s new production of the bard’s immortal tale of young love thwarted by old hate. Aside from high school students, who may be relieved they now don’t have to bother reading the play, the rest of us may wonder what more can really be done with this well-worn ‘tragi-rom’.
Enter Lyceum stalwart director Tony Cownie to infuse the piece with some smartly provocative imagery; there’s more than a tinge of Prohibition-era aesthetic to the mise en scene, not least in Neil Murray’s costumes, with Nick Farr’s Montague draped in the kind of pin-striped suit Al Capone could have batted some heads in. Rendering the warring families as gangsters, that staple metaphor for cutthroat capitalism at its extreme, does much to give the play immediacy, with a conservative government encouraging us to be entrepreneurs, to go out and get yours. Such an attitude is of course anathema to love and would thus make for resonant drama, were that love not curiously lacking from the production. It’s not that Shakespeare’s poetry is finally showing its age; it’s as sumptuously sensuous as ever; but rather that Will Featherstone and Kirsty Mackay don’t quite have the necessary spark, turning in instead sexless performances that only seem to come to life when pouting. Which leaves lots of room for the strong supporting cast to steal the show, in particular Steve McNiccol as a vibrant, camped-up Servant, and Grant O’Rourke as Mercutio, who continues to prove himself a promising talent.