The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy [of Romeo and Juliet]
words by shakespeare
additional words by the cast
What would you die for?
SHAKESPEARE's timeworn classic, revitalised for the reality-TV generation
by VOLCANO THEATRE COMPANY.
Watched by cameras and monitored on TV screens, four strangers meet
in a house to enact a bizarre game of risk and passion. Over four days
they will compete to sacrifice themselves for what they believe in.
Funny, tender, disturbing and beautiful, with music from West Side Story
to Monty Python and a special guest appearance from Barbie and Ken.
Strictly untraditional Shakespeare.
"Most directors realise that Shakespeare hadn't quite got his act together
when it came to editing and tightening his own work, and that by the
time the play drags towards a close half the audience will be silently
willing the lovers to die as quickly as possible so they can get to
the pub before last orders." (Lyn Gardner, The Guardian). Volcano's
stylish antidote brings you all the essential stabbings, poisonings
and suicides together with terrific music, movement and video - and
even leaves you time for a pint after the show.
Thoughts
on Romeo & Juliet
I have always thought that Romeo and Juliet is an unnecessary play.
Why unnecessary? Well, if you are in love the last thing you want to
do is spend several hours in a theatre watching actors say they are
in love and then kill themselves. And then if you are not in love there
surely is nothing worse than attending a play that has pretensions to
be one of the greatest love stories of all time. For those of us in
love the play is a melodramatic harbinger of doom, for those of us out
of love the play is too slow to kill off the maudlin pair.
From our point of view the play is a problem, but that however is a
good place to start. Many of our shows have started with us declaring
a critical or problematic relation to the text. For example our version
of Macbeth based (loosely) on Fred and Rose West; Private Lives set
in an Eastern European "priory" or our attempt to make sense of Ibsen's
contribution to our dramatic heritage in How to Live. Our feeling is
that having interrogated the text, the next stage is to roll up your
sleeves and wrestle with the material that you are seeking to conquer,
occupy, transform and then present to the public.
Volcano's last two shows, Imaginary Woman and TalkSexShow have been
very particular investigations of personal demons and desires. In their
very different ways these two shows attacked the ground rules that inform
the language of theatre. We intend to return to these investigations
- particularly with a performance that we are planning called Performer
and Critic. But for the moment we wanted to return to more familiar
territory. The deconstruction of classic texts has been work that we
have been doing now for more than a decade. Romeo and Juliet is a problem.
The most obvious route chosen by film and theatre makers has been to
make the feud between the two families contemporary. What remains untouchable
in these versions is the love between Romeo and Juliet. That seems a
little too easy to us. So in the version that you have before you we
have tried to re-examine the love story and dispense with much of the
plot and feuding context. It is, in fact, a very different Romeo and
Juliet. Excellent and/or lamentable.
Paul Davies (Co-Director)
Volcano's Romeo & Juliet opened at
Theatr Brycheiniog on 6 October 2004 and toured the UK for eight weeks.
In 2005 it opened at the Arcola Theatre in London and toured for nine
weeks.
