romeo and juliet
the stratford festival
the national post

It's always a good sign when an audience at Romeo and Juliet laughs with, as opposed to at, the balcony scene. The lovers, despite some recurring premonitions, don't know at this early point that they're in a tragedy; they're giddy with the excitement of finding one another. They also get one another's words wrong; "what satisfaction canst thou have tonight?" asks Juliet, when all he wants is an exchange of promises. Graham Abbey and Claire Jullien, in the new production at the Stratford Festival, sweep us up in their happiness, and the underlying precariousness of it seems all the more wrenching.

Miles Potter's production uses Elizabethan costumes, and even has the nerve to begin with the strumming of a lute. (Not only that, but at the death of Juliet, the lute plays something that sounds much like that all-purpose standby for period plays, Greensleeves.) It starts, or nearly, by filling the stage with the familiar crowd of serving wenches, carrying their familiar fruit baskets. It is, in short, extraordinarily traditional. It is also extraordinarily lively, giving the impression that although director and cast never went self-consciously looking for novelty, they often found it. Those wenches, for example, are not just decorative; they have a reactive part to play in the opening, and sexist, dialogue between two Capulet servants that sparks off the play's first brawl.

That and subsequent fights (arranged by John Stead) are exciting, varied and character-driven. Wayne Best's Mercutio is an accomplished and compulsive show-off; he has already provided a rivetingly sardonic account of the Queen Mab that still manages -- partly because of the way the other actors set it up -- to be magic.

No, in the middle of his duel with Nicholas Van Burek's Tybalt (more snake than cat), he feigns a death wound most persuasively. He's crying wolf; when he receives the real fatal hit, nobody believes him and he has, angrily, to joke them into paying attention. The complicity of Romeo, the would-be peacemaker, is starkly brought out, and so is the newborn fury that turns him too into a killer.

Some of this has been done before. But I have never previously seen the friar (David Kirby) who fails to deliver the fatal letter to Romeo played as a cheerful gossip, totally unaware of what he has unleashed. It makes perfect sense, and adds a brilliant new colour to the play's last movement. Nor have I ever known a production to be so bold with the irruption of the musicians into the scene of mourning over the drugged Juliet. This too makes sense, atmospheric sense, since looked at coldly this scene is farce; the Capulets are making a huge tearful fuss over somebody who isn't actually dead. (This scene, like some others, also brings forward a promising new clown in Courtenay J. Stevens.)

Abbey's Romeo, too, can laugh and be laughed at. His languishing over Rosaline, with whom he fancies himself in love before he meets Juliet, becomes a way of distinguishing himself with the boys: platonic locker-room talk. His despair after banishment is done, literally, flat-out. "Art thou a man?" asks Friar Laurence, confronted by this self-indulgence, and the truth is that, no, he's still a boy. He doesn't really grow up until he hears the news of Juliet's death and defies the stars, and then he does it, superbly, in an instant. (Though Romeo is never, ever, as inwardly mature as Juliet.) Abbey has the gift of authority even when quiet, rare on this stage.

Jullien's Juliet lacks his facility, but she is very appealing as she negotiates the shifting limits of the girl's obedience and independence. She too grows up in an instant: the moment at which Juliet's parents -- with especial bitterness in this production -- desert her. The play is exuberant, early Shakespeare; with the built- in disadvantage that the lovers verbalize too much; they talk at times when the normal stricken person would only sob. Juliet, the more intelligent, suffers the most from this. Jullien at least makes us feel that the character is discovering her emotions in finding the words for them.

The production postpones tragedy until the last moment: in fact, until after the principals' deaths. What is most deeply moving here is the reaction of those left behind; as, at a funeral, you feel sorrier for the survivors than for the deceased. The two bereaved fathers are strongly played, and their reconciliation accordingly momentous.

John Dolan's Montague is thoughtful and dignified; Scott Wentworth's superb Capulet heads a riven household. He loves his daughter, but has no idea how to deal with her; he is deeply at odds with his young wife, especially when she starts mourning extravagantly over the dead Tybalt. I have seen Lady Capulets before who were in love with Tybalt, but never a Lord Capulet who seemed to notice. The man becomes a tyrant, which makes his final melting all the more affecting.

Some concluding words for Keith Dinicol's Friar, best when tetchiest; for Lally Cadeau, who cannot make the Nurse's endless reminiscences funny but is very good and watchful when she gets down to business in her mistress' service; and for Aaron Franks' bodeful Apothecary, impressively framed in his shop-front. A warm welcome to a production that touches heart and mind at once.