Musical by Gérard Presgurvic, director: Redha Benteifour

A very colourful evening, with nice background music, acrobatic dancing and a pseudo-Shakespearean story.

Dominique Borg’s costumes are a cross between futuristic rags and Renaissance finery, with lots of glitter thrown in for good measure. The Capulets wear reddish tones, Juliet ends up in a soft pinkish glow (or white for the ball); the Montagues are in blues fading into greens and Mercutio wears violet. The overall effect is striking, especially in the mob/street fight scenes, with red and blue mixing, blending and flowing.

Coupled with the dynamic, acrobatic (lots of lifts) style of choreography, the ensemble scenes are fascinating and entertaining to watch.

“Viva Verona” is the first song and one of the highlights of the show. The rest of the musical lives off the scenery (exquisite work by Duncan Hayler) that is at once practical and original in its use. There are three large towers that can be pushed onto the stage and, turning, reveal three distinct sets: one houses the Capulet’s living room, the next Juliet’s bedroom (these two can be connected by a little bridge); the third is Friar Laurence’s cell.

During the street scenes, performers are on the (plain brownish with sparkles) towers as well, giving a well rounded, complete image, covering the stage with colour. The lighting is beautiful and subtle as well, reds and blues mainly, few gobos, more spotlights.

The end scene again is beautifully staged – a rather Japanese inspired magnolia tree with pink blossoms on the right, black wall in the back, copious amounts of fog and Juliet on a bier in the middle. The bier is set in a circle that is bordered by a rectangle. Sparse, but undeniably compelling imaginery.

The orchestra plays very well, although they often drown out the singers. Since I saw one of the first performances, this may change with practice.

In general, the music made for a nice backdrop, although there was no melody that really stuck in mind; the love theme was unfortunately thoroughly unmemorable. While the cast was giving their best, the complete absence of anything resembling lyrics didn’t help with story telling. I found the text spectacularly inane at times.

Another thing that didn't work very well was the supposed “explanation” for Tybalt’s hatred of Romeo. Tybalt had two songs to explain himself – one told of his being a child of hate and force (I suppose that to mean he's a bastard/rape child) and the second hinted at his deep love for his cousin Juliet.
While incestuous desire in itself would make a fair explanation, there’s sadly no development of the theme. The only, subtle and well-executed idea in connection with this was Tybalt’s behaviour at the ball. He tried to dance with Juliet, touching her face, smiling at her, even pushing Paris aside – I loved the detail in this.

There were some speaking parts in between the songs and while I think it’s sweet they thought to use Shakespeare’s words and language, it would’ve been slightly more effective if they’d stuck to Renaissance wording and not tried to couple it with more modern language. It was a break in the feel of the scene each time that grated.

Additionally, I don’t think that it would've been necessary to force musical actors/actresses to fluently and convincingly speak Shakespeare. They are singers and dancers first and foremost and are not to be expected to additionally be brilliant stage actors. “Westside Story” works without direct contact with Shakespeare’s language – a play isn’t a musical and it shouldn’t be forced to be unless the text is suitably adapted to fit the genre. In this case, it just wasn't.

While the cast was good, sang well and was certainly talented in terms of dancing, there was no one who was particularly striking to me. Shining excepting was Carin Filipcic’s nurse – her solo was amazing in that her stage presence and acting ability made even the bland non-lyrics shine.

Juliet (Marjan Shaki) was sweet, Romeo (Lukas Perman) smoothly languishing, Benvolio (Matthias Edenborn) convincing and Tybalt (Mark Seibert) memorable through his “germanic-athletic figure” (1) that made for a butch gangleader.

I wasn’t much enamoured of Mercutio, who tried to clown around, but left a bleak impression if that; his death throes and gasped singing ended with me chuckling merrily (though I suppose that may rather be attributed to bad translation of the lyrics than the actor in this case).

A few roles were quite over-acted, Friar Laurence among them. The blatant (and futile) try to fleshen out Lord Capulet’s character by giving him a heartrendering song about his jealously guarded oh so well loved daughter made me want to gag. It was of no consequence to the story, not exactly Shakespearean and I don't really needed to see Lord Capulet sobbing on his knees from emotion.

The staging of one scene was, in my opinion very much off, namely Tybalt's death at the hands of Romeo. After Mercutio's gratuitous death throes (Tybalt was amusingly non-butch, panicky, and shocked at having *killed* Mercutio), Romeo got up, took the knife/dagger from the floor, ran up to Tybalt, casually stabbed him in the back (forget honour, manliness and the duel), then turned around and started to lament what he'd done. If that wasn't the death sentence for anything remotely Shakespearean...

I also don’t see why women were reduced to pretty things standing about on stage and throwing themselves at whatever dead men were on stage, screaming like banshees or turning up in spotlighted fight/pseudo-rape scenes. It was nice that the musical began and ended with Lady Capulet and Lady Montague expressing their feelings in song. They were the ones to make peace, Lord Capulet just stood there, the Prince didn’t even turn up in the end scene (I didn’t see him at least).

The musical lives off the colours, the impressive scenery and generally the staging. The cast couldn’t be much better due to the lack of concise plot, character development, lyrics and memorable music. As the screaming of the teenage fangirls indicated, however, as long as enough reasonably attractive young men are on stage and the musical’s called the ‘greated love story ever’, such concerns don't need to be mulled over.

To, once again quote the Presse: “In the musical version, Shakespeare’s dramatic love story became a loud spectacular with an overpowering stage show, but without poetic sensibility” (1). I couldn't agree more.

(1) Presse, 26 February 2005, page 35; review by Isabella Wallnoefer.