5 Stars “a very powerful, insightful, radical and empathetic performance”
So, you think you know the story of Romeo and Juliet? If you don’t it is, in a nutshell, a tragic love story that involves two young people who fall in love and due to their families ‘differences’ cannot be together. What follows, in the original, is dramatic, heart breaking and shows the audience the meaning of true love (against all the odds!). If you do know the story, be prepared to be surprised by this version, although it follows all the basic principles of the original it does it in such a way that it challenges all your previous thoughts on who can play which character. This is done in a positive, up lifting, inspiring and challenging way.
Romeo and Juliet is being performed at Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot until Saturday 5 October 2025 and was written, of course, by William Shakespeare. This version is produced by Shakespeare North Playhouse, Graeae and Theatre by the Lake.
Laura Collier, Creative Director of Shakespeare North Playhouse, says, “We aim to empower everyone to express themselves and share their stories. This production, our first collaboration with Graeae and Theatre by the Lake, is just many ways we celebrate storytelling.”
Jenny Sealey OBE, artistic director of Graeae (for 27 years) says, “For this play, my final line up of young Deaf, Disabled and neurodivergent actors have helped create a version of Romeo and Juliet which has a framework around it, allowing us to question casting and who should be who”.
And that is why this version is so different!
The theatre had three screens around the ‘Cockpit’ area, which is a circular stage in the middle of the audience in the style of theatres in William Shakespeare’s time, it is lower than traditional stages and allows the audience to feel more involved in a very immersive experience, they were there to show the Creative Captioning throughout.
Creative Captioning offers us a visual depiction of what is happening on stage. This includes ‘words’, similar to subtitles, but is so much more! It showed the dialogue in real time and using a combination of video design, colour and animation it brought the play even more to life.
At the beginning of the performance we meet the cast who you quickly realise are at an audition, a synopsis of each of them appears on the screens and is ‘spoken’ across the theatre in a slightly robot style voice. The cast are made up of Deaf, Disabled and neurodivergent actors:
Petra Dobre, Reece Pantry, Cherie Gordon, Ciaran Forrest, Rheanon Lee, Shreya M Patel, Kellan Frankland, and Niamh Longford. There were also two BSL interpreters, Craig Painting and Irmina St Catherine, who are integrated fully into the performance.
The enthusiasm was immediately evident and drew you straight into everything that was happening on stage! What followers is a very powerful, insightful, radical and empathetic performance, brilliant! It was a performance of Romeo and Juliet but it was also so much more! It had some funny moments, emotional moments (and was a little confusing at the beginning!) and some brilliant acting but what I found was that it pushed your conception of who should play certain roles. I loved it and would recommend it as a thought provoking and very enjoyable experience.
All the performances were excellent but feel Rheanon Lee, who was making her debut, was outstanding and really powerful.
The show is 2 hours long, 60 minutes act 1, 20 minutes interval and 40 minutes act 2. The Shakespeare North Playhouse is a lovely, friendly theatre that has a small café that sells drinks and light snacks at reasonable prices. It also has a small bar area on the upper floor. Some of the seats are bench style with no backs which may become a bit uncomfortable however as this is a short performance it was fine for me.
Photo credit: Patch Dolan
Read the online review here
