20/09/2025
Review by arts editor Sarah McNeill
Romeo and Juliet
Bell Shakespeare
State Theatre Centre/touring
“This play is so famous it can hardly be seen clearly,” says director Peter Evans of the love story between Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet.
But Evans has seen it clearly enough to give this new touring version a clear-eyed freshness and raw honesty. The focus in this minimalist production is on the text, highlighting how love in the midst of battle still resonates four hundred years on.
While the young cast are about a decade older than the teenagers of Shakespeare’s world, they effortlessly capture the impatient, impetuous lust, love and hate that fuels this tragedy.
Ryan Hodson and Madeline Li are the famed star-crossed lovers. Ryan is superb as the impulsive adolescent who mourns his thwarted love for Rosalind right up to the moment he spots Juliet at her parents’ party and falls instantly in love with her. His is a lustful impetuous energy that leans into the tragedy of organising a secret marriage within 24 hours of meeting Juliet.
Like most teenage girls, Madeline Li’s Juliet is more worldly. Her instant joyful girlish attraction to Romeo is tinged with the rational urgency not to marry Paris (Jack Halabi), a man she cares little for.
While their love is the heart of the story, it is inevitable wrapped and shaped by the long feud between their two families. Tom Matthews’ angry Tybalt captures perfectly the idea that fighting is what defines him.
No matter that no one remembers what the feud is about, the next generation carry it forward with endless street brawls.
Only the love-lorn Romeo, the stable, considerate and likeable Benvolio (James Thomasson) and the well-meaning, meddling friar (Khisraw Jones-Shukoor) recognise the feud’s futility, while the wonderfully wry, witty and capricious Mercutio (Brittany Santariga) engages in it for the entertainment of it – until his deeply moving death and heartfelt “a plague on both your houses”.
The downfall of this production is not the uniformly strong cast, but Anna Tregloan’s all-black costumes on a black reflective set and Benjamin Cisterne’s low-level lighting. Despite the cast’s best efforts to inject energy and enthusiasm into the joyous moments, the play is cast into a gothic gloom.
Given the practicalities of a touring set – two platforms, rugs and festoon lighting - Bell Shakespeare continues to breathe new life into Shakespeare’s words, reminding us that generational feuds, abiding friendships and love at first sight are as new and fresh and possible as ever.
Photo: Ryan Hodson and Madeline Li breathe new life into Romeo and Juliet.
