The Verona project, part XII
Who (how old), when, how long? Patrick Ryecart (25), Rebecca Saire (14! and looks it! and sounds it!), 1978, 2¾hrs.What sort of R&J? He: bland; she: so very young. This entry from the Beeb's Bard-o-copia is one of only 3 R&Js I'd seen before the project, and though (because?) that was nearly 30 years ago, when I was in grad school, I would have made it the front-runner for the best of the bunch. Sadly, though, it's mostly just ordinary, certainly no better than the other BBC one inexplicably made only a bit earlier. But what makes this notable is its breaking through the midteen barrier for Juliet; I wouldn't have thought that could make such a huge difference, but it really changes everything. Saire's acting is generally in the B- range (though in the III.ii exchange when the Nurse brings the [at first confusing] news of Tybalt's demise, she raises her game to A level), but that adolescent face and carriage and that little girl's voice all raise the stakes--particularly, say, at the start of that same III.ii, when married-but-virginal Juliet, unaware that anything is awry, urges night to come asap, "And learn me how to lose a winning match, / Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods." She speaks the lines earnestly, but it's clearly academic and quite mysterious--as it would be, wouldn't it? As young as Olivia Hussey was when she played Juliet, and as well as she carries off the role, the balance of her inexperience with her sexual eagerness is never altogether convincing. With Saire, it can't help but be. And that makes a mostly B- performance about as affecting as any performance can be. Unfortunately, there's no indication that her Romeo is worth the candle. But then that would be true to a 13-year-old in first-love, too, wouldn't it?
Seriocomic scale for first scene? Unfortunately, though the comic lines are mostly present, they're not played comically, so, oh, 7.
"Wherefore": do the playmakers know what it means? Not absolutely clear, but given the production company, how could they not? Certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt. Though see below for a rather grotesque failure to understand the text.
Carrion flies? Yes--he even illustrates by snatching one out of the air.
Body count? The full 6.
What (else) is missing? For a nearly 3hr version, there's a lot of streamlining: much of the musicians bit in IV.v (a common cut, but more often hacked completely); the Nurse's revelation to Juliet at the end of III.ii that she knows where to find R, and Juliet's vouchsafing to Nurse of her ring (though when N then turns up at Friar Laurence's, she gives R said ring); R's recollection in V.i of having seen an apothecary shop--instead, he goes straight from "O mischief, thou art swift / To enter in the thoughts of desperate men" to "What, ho! Apothecary!" Swift mischief indeed!
The most disturbing deletion is the line after Juliet tells her mother, "Indeed I never shall be satisfied / With Romeo till I behold him--dead--" Uh, it's kinda important to continue that with "Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vexed." In other words, "dead," which she means for her mother to read as applying to J's wished-for view of R, in fact applies to "my poor heart [which is] so [much] for a kinsman [her husband, but Mom is to understand it as her cousin] vexed." It's an amazing and vital part of one of my favorite double-entendre-chockablock passages, and its excision suggests a serious failure in the director's reading.
What (else) is changed? A couple of locations are counterintuitive: Benvolio (who has in I.i been humbled and then cut by Tybalt), first finds Romeo in the countryside, so when R says "O me! What fray was here?" he must gesture at Benvolio's bandaged hand rather than, as typically (and sensibly) staged, the mess in the piazza. And after R kills Tybalt (stabbing him repeatedly, with malice aforethought, rather than the single almost accidental poke that seems traditional), III.i shifts from the piazza to the palace for the Prince to solicit Benvolio's testimony and pronounce R's banishment.
What (else) is odd? R & J dance at the masque in I.v, which is not unique to this production, but it seems to me that if you're going to have them dance, then you want to cut the second half of the later line when J asks Nurse, "What's he that follows there, that would not dance?"
Odd in a good way: Friar L palms his vial at an opportune moment after almost everyone has left seeming-dead J's chamber. In one other version I recall seeing J having time to dispose of the vial after drinkings its contents, but mostly it just doesn't seem to be an issue that her people are apt to find an empty medicine flask in the dead girl's bedroom.
Odd in a vile way: the Apothecary (whose "poverty but not [his] will consents" to sell R the outlawed poison--who is, in short, profit-driven) is a hook-nosed, heavily accented Central Casting Eastern European Jew. As, no doubt, he often was in Shakespeare's time, but still.
End-of-the-play exposition? No, this is handled beautifully: Friar L delivers the first five lines of his confession to the Prince outside the crypt, then we go inside with Capulet and wife, who are soon joined by the chiding Prince.
Most familiar faces: John Gielgud as the Chorus (that's a sonnet each at the start of acts I and II, if you're counting), 31yo Alan Rickman as fiery Tybalt, and John Paul as Montague, who I finally figured out played Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa in I, Claudius. Oh, and it wouldn't do not to praise the performance of Celia Johnson, the most convincing and engaging Nurse I've seen thus far.
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