Set play: Romeo and Juliet

12th October 2001, 1:00am

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Set play: Romeo and Juliet

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/set-play-romeo-and-juliet

Director Alasdair Ramsay possesses powerful motives for this production of Romeo and Juliet at Basingstoke Haymarket. First is his passion for Shakespeare and his conviction that the play speaks directly to young people. Next is his experience of working with multicultural casts.

Finally, his production is shaped by his consuming interest in the history of China from the 1850s to the Cultural Revolution. Ramsay’s Verona becomes Shanghai in the 1930s. “It was an extraordinarily decadent place,” he says. “Culturally diverse, a melting pot. The opium trade was in full flow, with everyone living off it.”

The setting assists his conception of the cause of the tragedy. “The play is about a struggle for money and power. Factional strife causes the death of Romeo and Juliet.” In his production the warring factions fight for control of the opium trade.

Ramsay remarks that the Capulets and Montagues have been portrayed in many ways: Protestant versus Catholic, black versus white. In his setting the Capulets are Chinese, the Montagues the English community “who, in true colonial tradition, lord it over everyone else”.

Ramsay has cut the play to two hours, but regards the text as sacrosanct. “The only language change is that Mantua becomes Manchuria.” This promises to be a refreshingly new take. And there’s the prospect of a transfer to Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Box office: 01256 465566

  • Picture: Bronwyn Mei Lim and Simon Greiff as the Shanghai lovers
    • A longer version of this review appears in this week’s Friday magazine

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