Shakespeare’s R & J

The Splinter Group brings to London Shakespeare’s R & J, an imaginative retelling of Shakespeare’s classic love story, Romeo and Juliet.
The performance by four male actors is set in a strict catholic boys’ school. We watch the four being drilled on the parade ground, reciting Latin, going to confession and praying. Stumbling across a banned copy of the Shakespeare play the students secretly act out the forbidden text at night, discovering a world of beauty and excitement. The hot-blooded action exposes adolescence at its most painful, exploring passion and repression in this restrictive and repressed environment. Like Shakespeare’s Romeo, prompted by confusing emotions and the stirring of sexual feelings, these boys are testing the waters of adulthood, experimenting with the roles and rules of becoming men.