Manchester theatre seems to be rather inward-looking this month, what with Free Your Mind flashing images from the city's past on its giant screens in the style of an Olympics opening ceremony at Aviva Studios and, at the Royal Exchange, the audience enters to the sound of the likes of Guy Garvey, Morrissey and the Gallaghers to what the press release calls "a love-letter to Manchester", although director Nicholai La Barrie's viewpoint is as an informed outsider.
Geoff Aymer enters a bare stage surrounded by old loudspeaker cabinets wearing a medical mask and carrying a shopping bag, both of which he discards to sonorously declare the prologue. Enter the servants Gregory (Ike Bennett) and Sampson (Dominic Holmes), who bite their thumbs at Adam Fenton's Benvolio rather than the Montague servants (Benvolio is also merged with Balthasar's character later). This is a modern-dress street brawl with accents from the part of Manchester where the city's name is often pronounced to sound like it ends in "o", which works perfectly well.
Conor Glean's Romeo is a 'proper Manc', getting plenty of laughs from the giddy press night audience for his recognisable gestures and expressions, but he has a touch of the lovably pathetic about him as well. After making a show of mooning over Rosaline with the wonderful David Judge as Mercutio—who for me best achieved the marriage of character, accent, humour and meaning—they attend the Capulet rave, rather than ball, with Kate Hampson as Lady Capulet, but with the lines written for Lord Capulet to make her the matriarch, and Shalisha James-Davis's Juliet—who will be 17 on Lammastide, not 14—as MC. The front rows of audience are encouraged to join in, which made some of the following dialogue difficult to hear as they found their way noisily back to their seats.
After the fickle Romeo has switched his affections to his new love, a circular metal frame drops down from the flies as the balcony for him to climb in a set design by Good Teeth (Victoria Smart and James Perkins), another simple but effective element of which is the appearance of the marriage bed, which made the audience gasp—the same platform is used, significantly, for Juliet's catafalque later. Geoff Aymer's Friar Lawrence, tending his medicinal garden, makes the marriage arrangements, but Ashley O'Brien's fiery Tybalt intervenes in a disastrous showdown. Mercutio, in this production, dies in Romeo's arms, not offstage, in a tender, moving moment, but oddly, Benvolio still rushes on to tell Romeo of his death.
Gemma Ryan is a younger than usual Nurse, acting as the lovers' go-between, but still finds the humour in the character. Dominic Holmes's Paris is arrogant and self-regarding, so his death elicits little sympathy.
The ending comes about rather suddenly: almost as soon as the lovers have died, Ike Bennett's Prince rushes on to deliver the final lines, cutting out all the recapping of the plot and the promises of the parents to raise tributes to their dead children (Daniel Poyser's Montague barely gets to speak). Despite this and other cuts, this "two hours' traffic of our stage" still comes in at almost three hours.
All the cast speak most of their lines in the same slow and deliberate manner, which means that every word comes over clearly even for those not used to our accents, but there is a lack of variety in tone and pace, and sometimes an emphasis of style of delivery over meaning. The scenes of comic banter in particular, which are always a challenge for modern ears to interpret, tend to drag on a bit. Having said that, the first half is played a lot more for comedy than usual but some more emotional moments are occasionally allowed to shine through, though not enough for me to feel much emotional connection with the characters.
However, overall, it feels like a very modern, young, down-to-earth interpretation that certainly kept my attention, despite its length, and can only improve during its run.