Romeo and Juliet (Vol. 76) | Russell Jackson (review date spring 2001)
Russell Jackson (review date spring 2001)
SOURCE: Jackson, Russell. Review of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare Quarterly 52, no. 1 (spring 2001): 107-12.
[In the following excerpt from his review of the 2000 Shakespeare season at Stratford-upon-Avon, Jackson comments on the visual austerity of Michael Boyd's staging of Romeo and Juliet, surveys Boyd's directorial innovations, and summarizes the principal performances in the production.]
Michael Boyd's austere Romeo and Juliet was played on a bare platform with a runway down through the auditorium and two walls of plain wood curving into a blind exit at the back of the stage. Verona was not fair in any sense of the word. The play began with a chair hurled across the empty stage, and Sampson and Gregory entered in full flow. Nothing of the sexism and violence of the opening “comic” dialogue was spared; the fight that ensued was bloody and furious. As it reached a...
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