Southsea Shakespeare Actors, Station Theatre, Hayling Island.
Full of ideas and bursting with energy, Rob Bartlett’s fresh take on the world’s greatest love story cast the warring families as Roma and Lazio football fans, fighting on the terraces, doing drugs and drinking themselves into oblivion.
Chris Mills’ Romeo, at his best in the latter stages when in exile, was well-matched with Phoebe Saunders’ raven-haired Juliet, though the latter’s tendency to rush her lines meant some wonderful language was lost.
In an extremely strong supporting cast was Matt Gibbins’ drug-abusing Mercutio (delivering a dangerously edgy ‘Queen Mab’ speech), Hazel Aspden’s marvellously garrulous Nurse, Neil Gregory-Reader’s genuinely menacing Lord Capulet and Tim Suffolk’s totally believable avuncular do-gooder Friar Lawrence.
Unusual hinted sub-plots included the involvement of lovelorn Lady Capulet (Paula Bartlett) with firebrand Tybalt (a dynamic Stuart Williams) and the implied ‘sale’ of Juliet to Gavin Williams’ Count Paris, a rather out-of-place South American coke-snorting medallion-man.
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