Tom Holland in Romeo and Juliet at the Duke of York Theatre (Image: PH ) A voguish young movie star, onstage cameras, microphones placed conspicuously around a bare stage as well as taped to the actors’ cheeks, smoke, blinding flashes of white light, a continuous background hum as of a trapped hornet - how quickly the trademarks of a Jamie Lloyd production have become clichéd and predictable. Editing the text to suit his vision and cutting ‘extraneous’ characters, Lloyd has fashioned what he imagines to be an adaptation for the era. But the intelligence and imagination that went into his similarly radical versions of Cyrano and Sunset Blvd are entirely absent here.
Giant close-ups of shiny faces, live feeds from backstage and even scenes shot in the theatre foyer are mere technical gestures, conceptual liggers who bring nothing to the party. Don't miss..
. Tom Holland Romeo and Juliet tickets are still available through three methods [LATEST] Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers in Jamie Lloyd's Romeo and Juliet (Image: PH) As Romeo, Tom Holland is a charisma free zone, achieving the unlikely feat of being both buff and weedy. While this may be the right combination for Peter Parker/Spiderman it leaves Romeo dangling as a background character.
As Juliet, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers has more presence, though Lloyd seems reluctant to pursue the idea of ‘two houses both alike in dignity’ but racially divided; the theme of miscegenation is unexplored, even in the fo.