Forget Verona. We’re in Belfast after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and, of course, the narrative is a pretty good match. And I loved guitar-strumming Lyle Fulton’s quiet, measured prologue and epilogue.

Staged in the glorious Roman Theatre and set loosely at the docks in Belfast where people load sacks, climb grafitti-ed scaffolding and use funny little mobile phones, the production feels pretty truthful. And it’s all supported by popular Irish songs, many of them folksy, which punctuate the action. They don’t add much to the plot but they’re nicely played, ceilidh band style led by MD, Tom Cagnoni on guitar and they certainly underpin the period and atmosphere. We also get stylised balletic fights and choreographed group scenes (you can see the care with which they’ve been rehearsed )  which connote tension, joy, fear or death and the music works well with those.

Jenson Parker-Stone is outstanding as Mercutio – hopping about the stage, over-acting during the Queen Mab speech, doing cartwheels and singing beautifully. But of course, Shakespeare’s biggest show-off is also brittle and vulnerable and Parker-Stone gets that perfectly after the fatal stabbing.

Francesca Aldred’s Juliet is sweet but sensible. Yes, she falls head over heels in love with her rather unlikely Romeo (Ryan Downey), no conventional heart-throb but a convincing ordinary living, breathing young man, but she always seems in control. And she speaks the verse well. Arguably Juliet gets the best poetry in the play and Aldred knows how to make it work.

Kate Hamilton is wonderfully insolent and aggressive as Tybalt but it isn’t quite believable that a slender young woman would  be physically threatening to all those brawny dockers.

It’s a strong cast of twelve, including three musicians, playing a text which has been very neatly adapted so that lines are often re-assigned. Faith Turner, for example, plays Capulet who is actually a conflation of both Lord and Lady Capulet. She’s good and I suppose it makes sense for her character to have alcohol problems so that when she hurls her famous series of furious insults at Juliet she’s in a drunken rage. I’m a lot less sure about her late night pass at the nastily sinister County Paris (Matthew Rowan), though. It’s a good idea to have Benvolio (Lyle Fulton) also framing the play. Ben Whitehead doubles as a pretty rough Lord Montague and the Friar quite well although some sort of cross or collar to indicate his ecclesiastical status would make his second role clearer to anyone unfamiliar with the play.

Pronouns are changed along with place names and other things. I’m puzzled, though, about the choice of Dundalk in place of Mantua. Wouldn’t somewhere with three syllables to fit the rhythm of the verse have been better? Anna Franklin, as the Prince – the politician with authority – sweeps on stage twice and lays down the law in modern, unequivocal non Shakespearean language with an English accent and direct references to Northern Ireland. It takes you by surprise because it’s an abrupt swerve. On the other hand it drives home the message.

Of course the cast speak in Belfast accents (including Franklin when she’s doubling as an unusually lovable Nurse)  which are not native to most of them. So congratulations to accent coach, Josh Mathieson who has done a remarkably good job. I was almost fooled into thinking this was an all-Northern Irish cast.

First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/romeo-and-juliet-7/