Strathpeffer Pavilion, 25 February 2009

FRESH FROM 53 dates in Milan, Charioteer Theatre Company are touring the Highlands this week with their production of Romeo and Juliet – are Dead, a distillation by Nick Fearne of Shakespeare’s story of the eternally star-crossed lovers. Throwing aside everything other than Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Tybalt, the Nurse, and Friar Lawrence, the play is stripped down to the bone and remade as a three-hander.

No scenery; apart from the opening scene, no costumes, just everyday clothes, a black hoodie doubling ingeniously as Friar Lawrence’s monkish cowl and a beanie to transform Juliet into her cousin Tybalt, and for props two poison bottles and a large wooden cross suffice – yet the end result has twice as much life as many a full-scale production.

For this, full credit to the three young actors – Lorna Craig as Juliet and Tybalt, Scott Kyle as Romeo, and Alan Alpenfelt as Mercutio, Friar and Nurse – and to Laura Passetti, the intelligent driving force behind Charioteer. Concentrating on the main story the play runs at a smidgen short of an hour and a half, well within the tolerance of today’s allegedly short attention spans.

The selected Shakespearean passages are linked by the players speaking directly to the audience in the vernacular, yet still in character. This gives immediacy and intimacy to the proceedings, as do the frequent cast excursions into the auditorium, carried to the extreme when Friar Lawrence rattles the collecting tin along the front rows, and Romeo conducts his part of the famous balcony scene sitting in the audience.

This blurring of boundaries is wonderfully effective and holds the predominantly teenage audience (from Dingwall Academy, according to the notices on the reserved seats) spellbound, short attention spans or no. When Romeo and Juliet part after their brief night of passion (Act 3, sc 5) you could absolutely have heard a pin drop in the Pavilion.

Some minor quibbles must be mentioned. Alpenfelt has a tendency to gabble his lines at first and skates perilously close to the line that separates cartoonish comedy from pure unadulterated ham, but never quite falls over the edge. And Kyle sometimes seems disconnected from the meaning of the words he speaks, notably the shipwreck metaphor of

“Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!”

But they are minor quibbles in an accomplished production that Shakespeare himself would surely have found both riveting and refreshing.

© Jennie Macfie, 2009

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• Charioteer Theatre

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• Charioteer in Milan