Romeo & Juliet in Guildford town centre: Tom Holland eat your heart out
Romeo & Juliet on Guildford High Street - Mark Dean
“Are you comfortable being an outlier on that Tom Holland Romeo and Juliet?” a friend of mine asked the other night, with a hint of waspish amusement, alluding to the five-star rave of mine that stood out from the pack. The answer to which is ‘yes’: for me, Jamie Lloyd’s dark, brooding production astutely has an accent on verbal richness rather than old-fashioned visual splendour; it drains the expected colour from the piece to better show its stark heart.
That said, I completely understand the desire to see something more traditional, youthfully and amorously animated, and pleasing to the eye. And for those in that frame of mind, I say – while the clement weather holds – hie thee to Guildford. Yes, really.
The last time I caught Guildford Shakespeare Company in action was in 2015, watching the mighty Brian Blessed give us his Lear in the Holy Trinity Church after collapsing at a preview; a remarkable feat.
There are no star players on offer here, though a couple of stars in the making in April Hughes as Juliet and Christian James as Romeo, as fresh, appealing and radiant as you could wish. Given the first half of the evening is a promenade encounter with sites dotted in the old town centre, those of less Blessed constitutions should prepare (or avoid) accordingly. But the boon of this inventive, entrepreneurial version by Sarah Gobran and Matt Pinches (the latter directing) is that you’re never asked to loiter long and the fascinating stop-offs put a spring in your step.
The action begins by the steps of Holy Trinity – Surrey’s only large Georgian church – with the GSC’s amateur youth company stoking a topical air of oikish affray as Capulets and Montagues spar in the streets. Thereafter, the commanding delivery of David Carr in the priestly garb of Friar Laurence (intoning the opening lines of the Chorus) reassures us that attention has been duly paid to professional standards. And when we cross over to the beautiful courtyard of the Abbot’s Hospital, enabling a Jacobean-era sense of the Capulets’ lair, not only does the show fly but you’d swear that this was as close to Verona as suburban England gets.
Emma Manton is terrific as the gossipy Nurse, in winking conspiracy with onlookers. Daniel Burke’s projection, as Mercutio, at Tunsgate Arch, of the Queen Mab speech affirms the show’s organic acoustic advantages. And get this, there’s a bona fide balcony scene (albeit sans climbing) courtesy of the Tudor-founded Guildhall, complete with protruding clock (the text much concerned with the passage of time). Throw in a rousing, drunken dance-along to Dexys Midnight Runners in the local shopping centre, to conjure the Capulet ball, and the giddy comedy of the piece is duly honoured before the light fades, reality bites and we shuffle to, then sit in, the grounds of the Norman castle, where the headlong plummet into knife-wielding, poison-gulping tragedy is duly registered, with farewell loving and sorrowful parting conducted under a bandstand roof. Bravo.
Until July 13. Tickets: guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk
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