Romeo and Juliet
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Observer

Annually, it seems, Stratford remodels its stage and announces its longest season ever. The latter resource must soon die a natural death—not even the Arts Council can be relied on to provide a year with more than 52 weeks—but the former has indefinite possibilities. Having missed the Roman plays of 1972, I have often thought wistfully of the spectacular machinery installed for their benefit. Apparently I shall never see it in operation: Stratford, like everywhere else, is into simplicity. 

This year it is into Ellizabethan simplicity. The stage juts decisively into the auditorium, and the front stalls have been rearranged so that the audience may sit on either side of its protrusion. But one hardly thinks of it as an open stage in the manner of Stratford, Ontario, or its stunted child, Chichester. It is in fact very enclosed: by terraces. The concentric circles—upper and dress—no longer stop precipitously in mid-wall. They reach round the sides of the acting area, becoming part of the set, and meet at the back to become once more the preserve of the audience. One thinks of this stage in terms of balconies, so it is appropriate that the first play given there should be Romeo and Juliet.

Actually the balcony in this play is a separate construction, standing out from the timbered surround but harmonising with it; the scene fits into this structure with unusual aptness. The full picture, designed by John Napier, is maybe the most cunning yet devised for this house. It is reminiscent, not only of Shakespeare’s own stage, but of the tiered scaffolded settings devised at Stratford by Tanya Moiseiwitsch in the forties and fifties (I’ve seen photographs). But it has a warmth probably lacking then, and whose absence I mourn in the new Lyttelton on the South Bank. 

For this we thank not only Mr. Napier, but the patrons at the rear who complete the ring and must be rewarded by splendid views of the actors’ backs and the crowns of their heads. Only David Waller as Friar Lawrence is charitable enough (‘we still have known thee for a holy man’) to toss the odd fragment of soliloquy in their direction. I take it that their seats are cheap and that the company has tacitly adopted the principle expounded by Dame Edna Everage in addressing her audience, i.e., you get what you pay for.

This time round, you get a lot of it. When the chorus, a nice young man in denim, made the usual promise of ‘the two hours’ traffic of our stage,’ someone near me uttered a disbelieving grunt. He must have been to a preview, the premiere lasted nearer four hours than two, which, for a supposedly fast-moving action on a permanent set, is a very long time. In a way, perhaps Chorus tells the truth: one hour, if not two, seems taken up with traffic (as opposed to drama) and the jams are frequent.

In fact, for all its austerity, this is at heart a normally complicated RSC production. Full of comings, goings and elaborate standings-still. Some of these are helpful. The opening brawl is excellent; the ball, which involves a mass of Cupid, presented by Romeo’s party with Benvolio shooting toy arrows into the company, is festive, though it has made its point long before the lovers’ meeting. Perhaps the directors (Trevor Nunn with Barry Kyle) have had their happiest inspiration when Juliet is discovered doped on her bridal bed: her marriage escort arrives in full revelry, dancing and piping, turning ironically to lament. 

The subsequent altercations between the unemployed musicians and the clown Peter is played with both parties in a foul temper and shouting: a time-dishonoured method of dealing with Shakespeare’s comedy when you cannot figure out how to make it funny. Earlier on, Richard Griffiths is rather good as Peter, doing his stuff with a burly perplexed intensity, not to say an accent, that amusingly recalls Albert Finney’s Hamlet.

Mr. Griffiths connects with the audience better than many of those in more obviously rewarding roles. The most regrettable quality of this production—and the most surprising, considering what a platform stage is supposed to do for a play—is its remoteness. Marie Kean, though in no way startling, sets the nurse’s words snugly to Irish rhythms. Michael Pennington’s Mercutio is dangerously alive at the approach of death, but his earlier scenes are casualties of the production’s busy-ness: instead of building a relationship with Romeo and Benvolio, he has to go through exhausting routines for the entertainment of a crowd of extras. He is far more fantasticated than the Tybalt whose affections he despises. The best of the supports, by a long way, is John Woodvine’s Capulet, hearty, possessive, tyrannic, and momentously forgiving. Largely through him, the reconciliation of the two families becomes unwontedly affecting. 

Affecting too, is Francesca Annis’s Juliet, a slender flame but a true one. Her heights are the traditional ones of the potion, where she is really frightening, and the balcony, where she is really in love. While she is confident and generous, Ian McKellen’s Romeo is bewildered by his luck: a blushing youth hoping for favour and then basking in it, surprised even by the mood ‘that tops with silver all the fruit-tree tops.’

An actor who in his mid-thirties essays Romeo must expect double-edged compliments: having acknowledged him the best adolescent of his generation, I must express familiar misgivings. He is given to sulks, which suit some of Romeo but not all; he defies the stars with a violent twist of his mouth, sounding like tragedy and looking like a toothache. Like Miss Annis, he is good at dread, hurrying a line to its end with a kind of vocal shiver. Pillard sets are a permanent temptation to him, though I suppose that Romeo might well be given to posing in picturesque loops.