Play review: Romeo and Juliet

Abstract

bearded actors (in fact only two of them have real-life beards) or that they have several additional witchcraft scenes (this actually seems to have become a twenty-first century general rule), but the fact that they serve as comic relief, providing counterpoint to the tragedy of the Macbeths throughout the play. Their antics are a mix of Alinea, Tex Avery and the Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Serra even manages to nod to The Matrix when one of the witches comes with an incredibly long broom that she swings at one of the sisters who avoids it by leaning back in slow motion. Moreover, the three sisters literally lend a helping hand to the Porter (Maurizio Giordo), when they surreptitiously come to clear the stones that were left on the stage from the previous scene. Such a choice affects the play structurally, as it expands the comic elements beyond the Porter's scene, introducing a new balance not unlike Hamlet or King Lear. Even the cauldron (actually cauldron-less) scene is treated in this way: one of the tables from the banquet is left for the witches to sit upside down (i.e. they lean downwards resting their legs on the top of the table, like bats in a cave). Beyond the visual fun of the tableau, it offers a very relevant reading of witchcraft as total inversion of existing order. And at the end of the scene, Macbeth plays at 'Statues' to hear each prophecy. Macbettu, which has already won the Ubu award for the 2017 best theatre show in Italy, is an incessant cauldronful of fiendishly inventive ideas that capture the audience in a buoyant whirlwind meticulously orchestrated by Serra like an irresistible dance macabre.

From Armenia to Poland ‘with love’s light wings’

“…Reviewing the production for Cahiers Élisabéthains, Coen Heijes emphasised the dramatic impact of some directorial decisions, such as Friar Lawrence's suicide and Juliet awakening 'after Romeo had swallowed the poison, but before he died, allowing for a brief encounter between the two, before their inevitable death'. 14 Heijes also wondered whether the impact of the production was magnified by his total ignorance of the Armenian language, an experience that endorses Shakespeare's universality yet again.…”