mhk11 This uneven production includes more of the text than do most productions, but it still omits many lines. Some of the omissions are well-judged abridgments of the tiresome banter between Romeo and his friends or between the servants and the musicians. Other deletions are much more dubious, as we're deprived of some great poetic lines. Some of the excisions in III.i (along with the staging of the sword fights in that scene) have the effect of presenting Tybalt as a less bellicose character than the full text suggests.The best performances are those of Michael Hordern (Capulet), Celia Johnson (Nurse), Anthony Andrews (Mercutio), Alan Rickman (Tybalt), and Joseph O'Conor (Friar Laurence). None of those performances is impeccable, but each of them is at a high level.Rebecca Saire (Juliet) is not up to the demands of her role in some of the crucial scenes in the first half of the play, but she improves considerably after a mediocre rendering of the "Gallop apace" soliloquy. Patrick Ryecart (Romeo) is excellent in the bedroom scene, but his performance otherwise ranges from poor in the early parts of the play to mediocre in the later parts. Ryecart too often substitutes expressionless reciting for acting. In the balcony scene he is unintentionally hilarious, as he keeps crashing to the ground after ascending a wall. Moreover, whereas Saire's physical appearance is just right for Juliet, Ryecart's physical appearance is unlikely to set aflutter the heart of any fourteen-year-old girl.The sword fights are staged more impressively than in any of the other BBC Shakespeare productions, and the sets are generally well crafted. This production on the whole is pretty good, but it could have been excellent if the eponymous characters had been better portrayed.

wdavisterry Rebecca Saire and Patrick Ryecart and quite interesting as the leads. Saire gives a very good interpretation of Juliet and owns her scenes. She is beautiful, and her costumes are affective. Wearing clothing patterned after authentic period costumes adds a lot. She looks a little like Elsa Lanchester in "Bride of Frankenstein" in the heavy full-length dress of the day. Ryecart uses a more contemporary style, along the lines of England in the era of the Beatles and the Stones while remaining intellectually honest. It is unusual now to have a Romeo not be a teen-dream. Saire and Ryecart have some, not a lot of, chemistry. What the actors accomplish is to bring to the fore some of the questions in the plot. Why do they think springing their marriage on their families in the middle of a vendetta will not be received with horror? Or why doesn't Friar Lawrence see the likely outcome? They try to out-Machiavellian the rulers of a renaissance Italian city-state and the outcome is also predicable. The play is not the romantic tragedy it is reputed to be.Perhaps the production values could have been better if it had not been filmed in the style of a 1970s BBC program. Too many crane shots. The sets are variable. Very good background music in the credits and the musicians in the party scene are playing authentic instruments.This performance is from the first two seasons of BBC Shakespeare and is shows the original purpose which seemed to be to sell the package to school libraries from class discussion. Later they did more original interpretations of the plays and some of the actors in this are in the later plays; Ryecart, Michael Hordern, and Vernon Dobtcheff are the ones I saw.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU The dreadful and dreaded drama had to come sooner or later and it is the twentieth play of that series we watch. And the promise is kept. We shiver at the love and we quiver at the death of these two young people and we have nothing to do except simmer in our empathy and whimper in our impotence.This play is first of all a marvelous love story and as such it is the brightest and most beautiful play we know. From the very start the star Juliet meets with the meteor Romeo in pure love, a tempestuous love at first sight that needs no explanation and accepts no excuse or no opposition. They are young indeed since Juliet's age is lengthily discussed with plenty of humor from the nurse and some rather nostalgic pleasure from the mother. Juliet is not yet fourteen and as the mother says some ladies of note in Verona at her age are already mothers of a child.But Shakespeare does not condescend to make that love story in any way lurid. It is witty, as witty as so many sonnets by the same, witty but not bawdy. He brings pilgrims and prayers in the simple gestures of lovers, of hands meeting hands and lips kissing lips, and we can know what we are talking of here because the first scene is just a bawdy scene on the very verge of obscenity in the gross exchanges between the servants of the two houses. Obscenity is in the different between "biting one's thumb" and "biting one's thumb AT someone", equivalent of some F-word in present day English. They are as pure as unblinking eyes and un-twinkling stars. Juliet does not even want to bring the moon into their story because that moon is inconstant, and that is a key to Shakespeare's style and power.This moon and her three phases (in Shakespearean times it had only three phases), waxing, full and waning, is the most wicked character you can imagine. She is the triple goddess, the thrice crowned goddess, Hecate, goddess of the dead, Selene, goddess of the moon and the night, and Diana, the goddess of daytime, hunting and young animals, life in one word. That triple reference is used over and over and each one of these triplets, triple structures, leads to death and unhappiness. The Montague and their son Romeo are three and one will have to die, and in fact two will. The Capulet and their daughter Juliet are three and one will have to die. And the three women in the Capulet house, the mother, the daughter and the nurse, are the very pot in which the witch's brew of a clandestine unapproved marriage is going to germinate and then explode. And the play had started with the three social brawls and the three street battles caused by each of the two families.That couple is doomed because there will always be someone in-between the two lovers, good or bad, who will bring doom. The friar marries them in the back of everyone. Paris wants to marry the already married Juliet. Tybalt wants to prevent the relation between Romeo and Juliet. Tybalt and Mercutio will reach death, for Mercutio, when Romeo jumps in-between and Mercutio is killed under the arm (beautiful ambiguity, of Romeo. And the Nurse wavers with the situation and is the go-between of the doomed marriage, and then the supporter of the marriage with Paris. And there will be three corpses in the funeral monument at the end of the last, in fact third, night of this drama that is contained in three days, Monday, Tuesday, Wedbesday with tso small night extension (Sunday night and Wednesday night). Three is trouble, three is drama because a third element, character or whatever, always jumps between the two lovers directly or indirectly, like the death of Tybalt between Juliet cousin to Tybalt and husband to Romeo but who is also cousin to Juliet and step-cousin to Romeo.But this play has another dimension that is a lot less known or considered. It is an archetype of the freedom of lovers in a world where love is a family merchandise, or rather should I say in which a virgin is a merchandise to increase the power and prestige of her family, and we are dealing with the virginity of girls, since boys have whores and bawdy women to pass there desires from one body to another. This play is a tremendous pamphlet for the freedom of women in love, but also in life. It is a feminist play before all ages and probably the best homage Shakespeare could deliver to his Queen and supporter Elizabeth I without being indecent or superfluously flattering. That's the political dimension of this play, and it is also the best testimony England was advanced on all other countries at the end of the 16th century, at least 100 years ahead, and such dramas will only be put to the stage in France at the end of the 17th century, and in Germany with people like Goethe and Schiller one more century later, and the Italians will touch the problem essentially through religious Vespers, operas or other rites to Mary, Mary Magdalena and others starting at the end of the 1'th century in painting and in the 16th century with Monteverdi.This play has become a source of inspiration for many other artists in all arts and it is still played with the greatest success we can imagine, and this production by the BBC is quite in line with this fame and power, though maybe slightly too slow, but they preferred that to shortening some sections as many have done in the cinema particularly.FDr Jacques COULARDEAU

Alain English Easily the best known of all the Shakespeare plays, it has been seriously let down here. Shoddy direction, stagnant studio work and erratic performances spoil a fine tragedy.In the town of Verona, the Capulets and the Montagues have been feuding for centuries but tragedy is imminent when Romeo (Patrick Rycart), a Montague, falls in love with Juliet (Rebecca Saire), a Capulet. Bloodshed soon erupts...The studio work, especially in daytime scenes, seriously stagnates the energy of the play. It's a story that, with it's energy, deserves to be shot outdoors. Coupled with this the costumes are hideous, with too many tights and ludicrous codpieces. The stage fighting looks horrendous, with far too much stretching and running around to be engaging.Patrick Ryecart is too lightweight to be a truly effective Romeo. He manages the character's intensity when the plot gets going but his stately accent and bland, often inexpressive eyes limit his range. It is very hard for the audience to relate to this Romeo. Rebecca Saire is too youthful to be a good Juliet - she captures the character's naiveté but a little more sassiness would have been welcome.The supporting roles don't fare much better. Joseph O'Connor's Friar Laurence is fine but too many of his best lines have been cut. Anthony Andrews' Mercutio belongs on stage and not on camera. He gurns and gesticulates excessively and looks rather ridiculous as a result. Alan Rickman, underplaying his role, has virtually no presence as Tybalt. He did develop an edge and intensity to deliver some fine screen performances in later years, but that isn't in evidence here. The Prince can be a fine role with his brief appearances but actor Lawrence Naismith fails to give the part any authority on camera. Only Micheal Hordern, in probably his best role in this series, comes out of this with any dignity. His Capulet is well-played and a joy to watch.See one of the other versions of this story instead.