REVIEW ROUNDUP: Siân Phillips and Michael Byrne Open in Juliet and Her Romeo at Bristol Old Vic

Siân Phillips and Michael Byrne, playing the title characters, have officially opened in Juliet and Her Romeo at the Bristol Old Vic. In the piece, co-adapters Sean O’Connor and Tom Morris reset Shakespeare’s tragedy inside an old age home where the lovers are elderly and those who oppose their union are young. The production, directed by Morris, continues through April 24.

The company also features Tim Barlow (Tybalt), Terry Taplin (Benvolio), Michael Medwin (Paris), Dudley Sutton (Mercutio), Golda Rosheuvel (Nurse), Tristan Sturrock (Friar Lawrence), Abigail Thaw (Ms. Capulet), Lydia Poole (Rosaline), and Pal Aron (Doctor).

The creative team includes Tom Pye (production design), James Farncombe (lighting design), Laura Hopkins (costume design), Jason Barnes (sound design), and Tim Phillips & Marc Teitler (original music).

The critics have weighed in and are divided about the success of the inversion to Shakespeare’s play. They are, however, almost unanimous in their praise of Phillips and Byrne’s work as “the star-crossed lovers.”

Among the reviews are:

Daily Telegraph
Juliet and her Romeo at the Bristol Old Vic, review
“A production set in a care home reinvigorates an over-familiar play with intelligence, imagination and rare tenderness.”

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“I was especially moved by Michael Byrne, who plays Romeo like some old-school, rheumy-eyed poet, blessed with a rapt sense of wonder and with a delicious rueful humour about him as he declares: “With love’s light wings did I o’er perch these walls.””

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“Siân Phillips brings a faded glamour and a sense of style to a Juliet who will be 80 “come Lammas Eve”, and the love scenes between the pair have a gentle, heart-catching ardour.”

The Guardian
Juliet and Her Romeo; Romeo and Juliet | Theatre review
“This translation of the lovers from youth to old age will look like travesty rather than tragedy only if you think the centre of Romeo and Juliet is youthful rather than forbidden love. Tom Morris’s inventive production shows that isn’t so. He delivers the heart of the play with surprisingly little change to the text.”

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“As Romeo, Michael Byrne begins by being alarmingly over-convincing as a man who is tottering towards decrepitude, but grows, via comic touches (he almost winks when he says he had scaled his inamorata’s wall).”

The Independent
Juliet And Her Romeo, Old Vic, Bristol
“Still ravishingly beautiful (those facial bones!), Phillips also radiates an inner loveliness as Juliet and speaks the verse with an ardour that takes your breath away, sometimes wittily modifying her delivery to acknowledge the change of circumstance. Her Juliet is a physically frail but spiritually intrepid lady…”

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“Watching this well-meant but incoherent – and I’m afraid sophomoric-seeming – farrago, I kept thinking two things. Why not just do the play straight but with elderly actors in the lead parts? That would raise all the “issues” laboriously invoked here with a tacit eloquence. Or why not hire a contemporary dramatist to do a thorough rewrite?”

The Stage
Juliet and Her Romeo
“But does it work? At the level of new love discovered deep into old age it most certainly does, thanks largely to a spellbinding illustration of how to grow old gracefully by Sian Phillips as a radiant Juliet.”

The Times
Juliet and Her Romeo at the Bristol Old Vic
“The concept is tight and the strain tells. The production sits uncomfortably between something totally new and the familiar version that runs in parallel in one’s head […] It is always difficult to imagine that the men would actually resort to fisticuffs, let alone kill one another. They are so close to death in any case.”

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“Siân Phillips is an impeccably elegant Juliet, who doesn’t deserve to be bullied either by her doctor or her daughter. The young girl she once was can still easily be glimpsed within the older woman. Romeo first sees her at a tea dance as the half-remembered steps come back to her.”

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“It’s much harder for Michael Byrne’s wrinkly, beaming Romeo, who teeters on falling in love, not with Juliet, but with the sound of his own voice. Romeo’s impetuosity ill becomes an old man who has to drop his stick before he can hurl himself to the floor. Byrne is at his best when wryly humorous.”

Whatsonstage.com
Juliet and Her Romeo (Bristol)
“So the whole re-imagining reeks of not political correctness but political opportunism: the headlong passion and street-fighting vitality of the play are inverted to another scenario where “I prithee, good Mercutio, let’s retire,” gets a feeble laugh about OAPs behaving badly.”

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“76-year-old Sian Phillips is transcendent as Juliet, a game old sexy senior, while 66-year-old Michael Byrne struts his stuff as Romeo with a fading twinkle and what’s left of a mutilated text. RSC veteran Terry Taplin is a jolly Benvolio, while 83-year-old Michael Medwin potters around amiably as a pin-striped lost cause Paris.”

For further information, visit: www.bristololdvic.org.uk.