Rebecca Frecknall is fast becoming the director with a consummate gift for turning old into new. She does so with Shakespeare’s tragedy of love across warring factions, which follows her audacious productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Cabaret. This is not as radical a reconceptualisation but has its own stylistic inventions and brings a beguiling intensity in its faithfulness.
Played in modern, trendy dress that gives the opposing houses of Montague and Capulet the look of street gangs when they pull out their knives, it is a dance to the death, with some of the movement set to excerpts of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. This looks mannered at first: the opening fight scene turns suddenly into dance and bears an overly self-conscious resemblance to West Side Story.
