Spiderman does Shakespeare. This is the sizzling hot ticket of this year’s West End. Tom Holland, known to millions for his big screen exploits in the Marvel cinematic universe, created a box office stampede when it was announced that he would be appearing as one half of the star-cross’d lovers, with tickets going for upwards of £275. Yet I suspect that only the most ardent Holland fans are going to consider that money well spent; everyone else would be sensible to sit this one out.
This radically stripped-back production is directed by auteur-director Jamie Lloyd, who enjoyed a huge hit last year with his Nicole Scherzinger-starring Sunset Boulevard. Much of the aesthetic for that is replayed here, to markedly diminishing returns: the black costumes, bare playing space and omnipresence of onstage videographers to film the action, which is relayed on a giant screen.
Once more, there is abundant use of the theatre’s backstage and outside spaces and what seemed exciting for Sunset loses lustre when repeated so soon and so similarly. Our first sighting of Holland is a filmed one, in a backstage corridor: we glimpse the back of Romeo’s head, black hoodie up, cigarette smoke trailing.
“1597” is projected at the start and heavy black letters announcing “Verona” loom high, yet the production gives us no establishing sense of time or place, and even less of a city riven by an “ancient grudge” between its two pre-eminent families. A peculiar mode of speaking pervades the cast: softened, dulled and deadpan, the delivery bleaches the lines of too much of their sense and sentiment.
Francesca Amewudah-Rivers is a radiant Juliet with a luminous stage presence whose performance single-handedly elevates the entire show; no wonder Romeo is instantly shaken from his self-indulgent solipsism and Holland comes vividly and convincingly alive to display the rawness of fresh emotion. When the pair meet at the Capulets’ ball (another mighty peculiar decision of Lloyd’s, especially for a play not over-endowed with women, is to do away with Lady C altogether), erotic and romantic tension crackles instantly between them.
It’s a terrifically convincing portrayal of love – and lust – at first sight, a feeling that carries over into the pulsing passion of the balcony scene. Not, of course, that there is any hint of a balcony; instead, the pair sit side by side at the front of the stage and speak into the ether. Holland handles this moment of quiet intimacy, his finest in the play, with delicacy.
It all goes downhill after this, and not just from a plot perspective. The use of cameras and microphone stands prevails, to the detriment of the sense of the text: even the most intense dialogue is conducted without the two actors looking at each other. Come the denouement in the Capulet family monument, the strange speaking style, portentous soundscape and lack of eye contact left me feeling increasingly soporific – which seriously isn’t the ideal emotion for the climax of this mighty drama.
Duke of York’s Theatre, London to 3 August (romeoandjulietLDN.com)