Young audience relish a taste of Shakespeare

IT is not the first time that Shakespeare’s tragic tale of star-crossed lovers has been set to music, but what is special about Shakespeare 4 Kidz’s touring production of Romeo and Juliet is that it is aimed at children.

This was clear right from the start of the production, written and directed by Julian Chenery, when the prologue rolled on to a black, starry screen, parodying the beginning of the Star Wars films.

The mostly young audience was then whisked away to a piazza in Verona and a lively musical number that condensed the Capulet/Montague feud into the lyrics: “I hate them and they hate me”.

The show stayed pretty close to the wellknown plot of the son and daughter of two arch enemies meeting, falling in love and secretly marrying before family feuds come between them, with tragic consequences.

Each principal character had a song. The buxom nurse sang about bringing up Juliet, Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech became a shoulder shimmying,finger-clicking number, and even a gyrating, hippy Friar Lawrence stretched his vocal cords.

The production was slick, with relatively simple sets and good use of a screen to tell the audience where and when the scene was taking place.

The text mixed parts of Shakespeare’s original words with modern, simplified language, so schoolchildren who have seen the production will have a head start when they study the text.

The actors were well cast, with a gangly Paris and Aryan-looking Romeo, but Noel Andrew Harron as Mercutio stood head and shoulders above the rest.

His energy and excellent comic timing had the audience chortling and even whooping him on, milking every opportunity to draw laughs.

The titular parts, played by Matt Brinkler and Jenny Perry, both sang well,although Juliet had a tendency to overact.

But any criticism I could make would be meaningless, because the show was for children – to give them a taste of Shakespeare that they can understand and enjoy, and judging by the laughter in the first half and silence in the second, I think it did the job.

–Lucie Richards
BASINGSTOKE GAZETTE
29 January 2009