Botanic Gardens, Glasgow
Four stars
It’s all kicking off down at the local adventure
playground where rival gangs flirt, fight and hang out in the opening show of
this year’s Bard in the Botanics season of outdoor Shakespeare plays, which
this year falls under the Star Cross’d Lovers umbrella. Against a backdrop of a
peace wall mural preaching the power of love, the local n’er-do-wells run riot
by way of a series of square-goes that cause these youths to be more doomed
than most.
Before all that, there’s a drag party round at the
Capulets club-house that looks like something straight out of Rent, and should
lead to some serious voguing. Such a streetwise parallel isn’t that far-fetched
in Jennifer Dick’s contemporary production, which puts cross-dressing to the
fore. Dylan Blore’s floppy-haired Romeo sports a non-binary black kilt, while
Rebecca Robin’s Juliet clearly wears the trousers, a smarty-pants wherever
she’s at.
Notably here, both of the lovers are from single
parent families, leaving them and the assorted dysfunctional packs they run
with to carve out their own androgynous identities without too much in the way
of role-models. No wonder Esme Bayley’s gobby tomboy Mercutio comes a cropper
at the hands of Michael Lorsong’s more traditionally macho Tybalt.
If Romeo’s happy to be with the girls, Juliet’s nurse
is transformed here by Darren Brownlie into a gay best friend with angel wings
who serenades the budding romance with post-punk torch songs while sporting a
sparkly silver dress. More examples are set by Linda Duncan McLaughlin’s female
vicar. If only silly self-absorbed Romeo hadn’t tried to obliterate his loss
through a bad drug deal, both he and his true love might have lived to tell a
different tale in a spiky and cracklingly inventive take on the original
teenage dream.
The Herald, June 25th 2018
Ends
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