Gang Fights at The Globe
Watching swarms of school children congregate around the edge of the stage at Shakespeare’s Globe as we waited for Romeo and Juliet to begin, I felt a surge of nostalgia, writes Caitlin Odell.
I hadn’t been since there since I was roughly their age, taken on a school trip to supplement the learning of the same play. It’s astounding how deeply the literature you study as a young person becomes embedded in your memory when you see it brought to life on stage or on screen. After watching this modern-day reimagining of one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, I have a newfound appreciation for its importance, and its potential to convey pertinent messages to a young audience, in a way that can truly mean something to them.
I had to allow a moment to adjust to the discordance between the Shakespearean English and the set design that was very much reminiscent of any modern, urban cityscape (thanks to graffitied breeze blocks, balaclava wearing boys on bikes, electric scooters and mobile phones). However, once we had acclimatised, it quickly became clear the audience were unfazed by this. In fact, the clash added to the comedy in a way that I suspect it might not have done so had it not been taken on by the right cast.
Part of what I loved so much about this play was that it strongly evoked memories of scenes from Romeo and Juliet that are etched in my brain from years ago. And considering everything about the set has been designed to disrupt the original story, I feel even more certain it was the brilliant cast’s ability to capture the essence of their characters that made the performance feel both fresh and fun whilst remaining faithful to the original.
With this in mind it felt entirely appropriate that themes such as knife crime and domestic violence were not explored so much as simply shown in the play. But considering the target age range, I felt there was enough gravitas in just lifting them from the original script and recreating them in a modern context, allowing the violence to take on a new meaning.
A key example of this is the climactic final scene where Juliet takes her life after finding Romeo dead beside her in the morgue. After the music grinds to a halt and we are momentarily suspended in tense silence, the stage is filled with PPE-wearing crime scene specialists who neatly arrange the corpses into body bags and wheel them away. This decidedly undramatic and sedate ending did an important job of de-romanticising and de-glamourising suicide, death, knife crime and other prevalent issues that young people today are often overexposed to.
Shakespeare’s Globe, Bankside, SE1 until 13th April. Times: Tues – Sat 7pm; matinees 2pm. Admission: £5 – £65. Half price seated tickets for under 18s.
Booking: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/
Running time 90 minutes (no interval)
