Making her West End debut, and as one of Shakespeare’s best-loved characters, is probably no big deal to the young American actress, Sadie Sink. After all, she’s been acting since she was seven, and on Broadway since she was 10. She was a fan favourite in Stranger Things, one of Netflix’s biggest hits. She’s starred as the Taylor Swift figure in the short film written and directed by Swift to accompany “All Too Well”, one of the musician’s signature songs. Swift said she would have ditched the project had Sink not been interested. She was nominated for a Best Actress Tony for her performance in the Broadway production of John Proctor Is the Villain, the film adaptation of which she is now executive producing. And, at the time of writing, there is feverish speculation over her role in the upcoming Spider-Man film.
In Robert Icke’s modern-dress production of Romeo and Juliet, Sink shows exactly what all the fuss is about. She gives a deeply affecting performance as a nervy, hormonal, smitten teenager, all sudden awkwardness and overwrought gesticulation and earnest declarations, and brings a real freshness to this well-worn tale. She has genuine, palpable chemistry with her Romeo, the British actor Noah Jupe (A Quiet Place, Hamnet) who is also making his West End debut. The coup de foudre when the pair first see each other at the Capulet party is really well done and in the very charming balcony scene I found myself really hoping that things would work out for these two crazy kids.
Of course, as we all know, things don’t work out. Unfortunately for our star-crossed lovers they are members of two feuding families. And this is back in the day when feuding really meant something. Their young love is absolutely and utterly forbidden.
Director Icke introduces the innovation of, at several points in the play, having the cast very briefly depart from Shakespeare’s narrative to depict another possible course of action before rewinding time to resume showing us what actually does happen. These what-if? glimpses of alternative universes in which Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies and audiences delight at its happy ending, underline the fact that the tragedy is only one of the possible outcomes. Things might have been very different.
The play’s obsession with time is reflected in ticking digital clocks projected onto sliding screens (yes, there are actual Sliding Doors), constantly reminding us both of the helter-skelter pace of the events taking place and of the fact that time is running out. Juliet’s double-bed is at the centre of the austere stage, emphasising Romeo and Juliet’s full-blooded passion — theirs is no puppy love; they can barely keep their hands off each other.
Twenty-one-year-old Jupe and particularly Sink, who turns 24 during the show’s run, will rightly take the plaudits — their naturalistic delivery of the often tricky verse is outstanding and they are completely compelling as a couple — but there were two other standout turns. Clare Perkins is terrific as Juliet’s kindly, down-to-earth nurse and she makes the most of a meaty part. Kasper Hilton-Hille plays Romeo’s friend Mercutio as an immensely irritating look-at-me extrovert and he does it very well. He’s always pushing a joke too far, always eager to “hilariously” drop his pants and expose himself. He’s the Oliver Reed of 14th century Verona. I almost cheered when Juliet’s cousin Tybalt despatches him.
There were moments when the show teetered on the edge of the cheesy. One music choice, in particular, was a little de trop. The climactic scenes in the Capulet tomb, in which we see versions of Juliet as an energetic little girl and as a life-well-lived old lady and wonder at what might have been, flirted with schmaltz but in the end proved very effective.
Purists will baulk at liberties taken — Icke has ditched the prologue, for example, and made numerous other changes — but purists baulk at everything and it seems clear that this production is aimed at the young audiences that Sink and Jupe will surely attract, and that they will love it. For some, it will be their first Shakespeare — maybe even their first experience of the theatre — and they will laugh and cry and leave convinced that Shakespeare totally slays. That seems to me to be no bad thing.
Romeo and Juliet is at www.haroldpintertheatre.co.uk until 20 June
