He is masculine and artistic, driven and dreaming, arrogant and unsure – it’s a layered and deeply considered performance of compelling skill. He is at his best when playing Romeo, but his scenes throughout with Briggs-Owen are vibrant, sexy and simply wonderful. She is helped in this, in no small measure, by Tom Bateman’s exhilarating turn as Shakespeare.
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It’s a wonderful, world-class turn, full of beauty, gentleness, raw passion and enthralling skill.
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Her command of the language is particularly wonderful first, when she delivers the “If Sylvia be not seen” speech for Queen Elizabeth 1 (a tremendous, controlled and highly skilled turn from Anna Carteret) second, when she proves to be the first of the cast to understand how to deliver Shakespeare’s words with beauty and care thirdly, when she gives a tender, nuanced and completely, madly, in love Juliet in the premiere performance of the play for the Queen. She is infinitely better than Gwyneth Paltrow was in the film. If this does not make Briggs-Owen a star, there is no justice. Briggs-Owen commands the stage effortlessly and she is just as effective as the gangly, shy Tom Kent as she is as the bubbly, dreamy Viola – but she shines with particular radiance when she plays Viola playing the original Juliet in the key Balcony scene and the double suicide scene from the end of the play. So desperate is Viola for the theatre that she dresses as a man and auditions for the premiere performance of Shakespeare’s new play, which eventually turns out to be Romeo and Juliet. Lucy Briggs-Owen is outstandingly good as the theatre-obsessed Shakespeare-obsessed Viola de Lesseps, the daughter of a rich merchant sold in marriage to the horrid Wessex. If seeing this production does nothing more than expose audiences to this glorious passage, it would be enough. What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?įoster’d, illumined, cherish’d, kept alive. It’s all clever and evocative.Įssentially, Stoppard and Norman pick up this speech from Two Gentlemen of Verona and use it as the compelling spine of the loving theatrical frolics that follow: And some of the characters here are clear shadows of famous characters from the plays: The Lord Chamberlain is a barely disguised Malvolio, even to the extent of being imprisoned Sam has a touch of Thisbe Wessex reeks of Andrew Aguecheek but with some brains Burbidge wants his pound of flesh from Shakespeare a la Shylock but also manages a Hal-esque moment of great impact Viola’s Nurse echoes Juliet’s nurse Ned Alleyn personifies Mercutio with more than a touch of Hotspur the Boatman channels the spirit of the Porter and Gravedigger. Along the way, there are clear quotes or references to most, if not all, of Shakespeare’s plays and his most famous Sonnet. In form, it is somewhat like Twelfth Night mashed up with The Merchant of Venice, Henry V and, of course, Romeo and Juliet. And in this it is profoundly clever, intellectually satisfying, occasionally insightful or questioning and always refreshing and seductive.
It is an introduction to and exploration of the language, structure and characters brought to immortality by Shakespeare. It is played with clarity and finesse vastly entertaining.īut the play is much more than that. It’s genuinely laugh-out loud funny in parts, but there are moments of aching, tender beauty and raw desperation. On the face of it, the play is a knockabout farce with a lustful love story at its heart, and a wholly successful one. But, even so, it is in impressive, terrific shape and must be a sure-fire international hit (Disney is backing it). Excepting Chariots of Fire, no stage adaptation of a successful film (musicals aside) has come close to the success managed here. It is difficult to recall, at least over the course of the last seven years, a commercial production of a new play which has opened directly in the West End and which is as funny, dramatic, enthralling and educational (not about history, but about the essence of theatre). Partly, the proof of this can be found onstage at the Noël Coward Theatre on the West End, where Declan Donnelan’s production of Shakespeare In Love, written by Stoppard with Marc Norman and adapted for the stage by Lee Hall, is now in previews.
The work of Tom Stoppard will surely live on well after his and our deaths. No latter 20th Century writers met the grade, he said.Īt least in one respect, he must be wrong. Not too long ago, a clever theatre director was lamenting the fact that modern plays are too “in the moment” and will not, like those of Shaw, Ibsen, Euripides, Shakespeare, Webster, Inge, Williams, Albee, Chekov, Marlowe, Wilde and Coward (he listed others, but you get the idea) be revived again and again in a century’s time.
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