More London, more theatre

Meeting friends is always one of the pleasures of being in London; yesterday I visited the "Sunken Treasures of Egypt" exposition at the British Museum with kathyh and self were amazed at various wooden statues made of Sycamore tree surviving the millennia. (They, btw, looked more Greek than Egyptian and depicted Serapis. This led us to a sidetrack to the Serapeion in Tivoli and Hadrian versus Alexander in who immortalized his grief over his dead boyfriend more efficiently. K and self agreed it was Hadrian but that Alexander would have if he could have; he died too soon after Hephaistos.)

In the evening, after a quick chat with kangeiko, I saw the Kenneth Branagh directed Romeo and Juliet at the Garrick. This one stars Derek Jacobi as Mercutio, Meera Syal at the Nurse and his two leads from the live action Cinderella, Lily James and Richard Madden, as the lovers, only Richard Madden was down and out and thus I saw the understudy, Freddie Fox. Not being a Jon Snow fan, I didn't mind. Mostly I was curious how Derek Jacobi as Mercutio would work, given, well, the age difference between him and the rest of the cast, and was looking foward to Meera Syal.

Now I wasn't surprised Branagh cast Jacobi per se; he's worked with him so often and clearly loves the man, in the introduction printed in the program he credits DJ with inspiring him to act as a teenager, and he's cast Jacobi as Mercutio once already, in the radio production of Romeo and Juliet he directed back in the 90s (that one had Samantha Bond as Juliet if I recall correctly). I strongly suspect the wish of letting Jacobi do the Queen Mab speech on stage might have also featured into the choice. But of course casting a man Jacobi's age in this particular role alters the dynamics; his Mercutio is basically everybody's fabulous gay uncle, with him and Romeo more resembling a non emotionally violent light side Falstaff and Hal than the bffs (with and without strong homoerotic overtones) the same age they usually end up as. Where the casting almost hits a logical snag but is pulled off by the strongness of acting is Mercutio's duel with Tybalt. Because Fabulous Gay Uncle Mercutio should be wiser than and way past minding that Romeo doesn't challenge Tybalt back, or getting into a duel at all.

The way the production pulls it off: by being in the middle between the two interpretations of the Mercutio versus Tybalt duel I've seen; usually it's either that the duel isn't at first meant to be serious and both are still posturing until Romeo tries to intervene, or that they go at it violently straight away. Here, Mercutio revealing that his walking stick on which he sauntered and danced through the play so far has a hidden blade comes as a shock to everyone, including Tybalt, but it's also clear at this point Mercutio doesn't intend a duel, he just wants to humiliate Tybalt with this shock after Tybalt, in M's pov, has scored one off Romeo due to Romeo not answering the challenge. Mercutio then turns to Romeo as if to say "see, that's how it's done", and that's when Tybalt also draws, which again causes shock in the rest of both gangs. They then start to actually fence a bit, but still stylized; there's the danger of blood letting, and you can see why Romeo is worried and tries to separate them, yet at the same time, arguably both Tybalt and Mercutio are still more posturing than meaning it. Mercutio getting lethally hit is a complete accident due to Romeo's well intentioned separation attempt, not a deliberately meant deadly thrust on Tybalt's part, putting the guilt of it completely on Romeo. Mercutio actually follows stage directions and woundedly walks off stage, which I don't think I've seen before - all the productions, both stage and film, that I've encountered let him die on stage instead of Romeo having to wait for Benvolio's report to freak out and go after Tybalt.

Speaking of Tybalt, the production gives him and Juliet some interaction at the Montague ball, letting them goof around and hug, and he introduces her to the crowd, which I thought was a neat touch, though it also included something that annoyed me throughout - the characters sometimes get random lines in Italian. This presumably is meant to fit with everything being supposedly set in 1950s Italy, fashion wise, and taking its aesthetic cue from La Dolce Vita, but instead only helps making the characters feel like movie Italians, and not in a good way. The programm tells me that the 1950s Italy look is meant to evoke glamor on the surface but deep dysfunction underneath, with fascism but barely over and not talked about, but on stage, there's no sense of that, just of random "ciao, bella" type of interjections.

The one point where it really gets disturbingly dysfunctional is, not surprisingly, the Juliet versus her father scene late in the play, where Papa Capulet not just freaks out at his daughter and manhandles her, which I've seen before, but even slaps his wife and the Nurse around, and that feels like a brief excursion into a 'verse where the bonhommie old Capulet has shown before covers the brutal authoritarian, even fascist, underneath. But that's the only point where I felt what the program claimed was the reason for the setting actually was on stage.

In general, this was a fast paced, enjoyable production - Meera Syal wasn't just an earthy but highly attractive Nurse who wasn't too bothered by the young crowd & Mercutio's comments, and Lily James delivered the gallops pace speech in a way that made it clear even to the last row that this was Juliet looking forward to having sex and was a hormonal young teenager in general, with the big shift when the Nurse switches to Team Paris and Juliet realises she's alone and no longer confides in her coming across clear. Freddie Fox was a seasonably good Romeo, which is why I thought it was a shame his scene with the Apothocary was cut - to me, that scene says a lot about Romeo. I did miss some intensity in his relationship with Mercutio - the production does the by now usual thing where Mercutio gets carried away into his own rethoric in the last third of the Queen Mab speech, and Romeo has to talk him down again, but because of the age difference, this came across as a protegé calms suddenly fragile parental figure thing.

In conclusion: not a must, I've seen better, I've seen worse, but I enjoyed seeing this one.