Romeo and Juliet (2021)

I liked the conceit of this TV movie better than I liked the execution. It comes from National Theatre Live, when the theatres were closed earlier in the pandemic. The cast comes together in an empty theatre—onstage, backstage, in the rehearsal room, and so on—to bring the classic Shakespeare tragedy to life.

Set against the backdrop of their warring Verona families, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love. Their infatuation with each other overrides any concerns about what will happen if their families find out, and they seek to build a life together. But violence is everywhere, and their love can’t shelter them from it. As circumstances conspire to separate them, Romeo and Juliet make plans to be together if it’s the last thing they do.

I’ll admit, I’m picky about Romeo and Juliet. I really like the play, but I have a harder time with productions and adaptations that don’t capture what I love about it. Namely, 1) it’s a tragedy, but it also has a lot of humor. And 2) Romeo and Juliet are dumb, impulsive kids who destroy their lives over an infatuation. When a production paints it as “a love story for the ages,” I can’t connect with it as well. Maybe that’s not fair of me, but it’s how I relate to the play.

And to an extent, this production plays it a little too straight for me. All the actors are turning in good performances—special shoutout to Shubham Saraf as Benvolio and David Judge as Tybalt—but the way the production interprets the story makes me feel kind of removed from it. It feels static rather than immediate, respectful rather than raw.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t strong scenes and moments. The party at the Capulets’ is well done, Jessie Buckley does a great job with Juliet’s monologue before drinking Friar Laurence’s potion, and Mercutio’s final speech gives “a plague on both your houses” a weight I hadn’t seen there before. I also just really enjoy how the production is staged throughout the full theatre—the staging is excellent from start to finish. The offstage settings are used to great effect, and I like the choices the camera makes at times to linger on the reactions of someone who isn’t part of the scene (which we see sometimes in the scenes set in the rehearsal room, with the full cast present.) It was a neat way, not just to stage this story, but to make the theatre itself feel a bit like another character, which just further drives home the importance of theatre at a time when all of them were dark.

In addition to the actors I already mentioned, there are some other familiar faces in the cast. I’m not as familiar with Josh O’Connor myself, but I know he plays Charles in the more recent seasons of The Crown—as Romeo, he plays very well off of Buckley’s Juliet. Deborah Findlay, who I’ll always remember best as Greer in State of Play, is Juliet’s nurse, while Adrian Lester, one of my favorite Shakespearean actors, has a small role as Prince Escalus. The production also features Tamsin Grieg as Lady Capulet and Lucian Msamati as Friar Laurence.

Warnings

Violence, sexual references, drinking, and strong thematic elements (including suicide.)