Press for Romeo and Juliet,

MAY 2024, Jamie Lloyd X Tom Holland

Romeo was disliked by those in my class at school. Big headed, cringeworthy, out of touch. Spurting
lines like ‘O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright’ and ‘Love is a smoke made with a fume of
sighs.’ This was opinion partly driven by my English teacher, Mrs Lea, who shared similar views (and
didn’t hide them), and partly driven by the class’s general disgust at Juliet’s age versus her lovers. If
Romeo and Juliet’s death-marked love was to hit headlines today, would it be these subtle
undertones of grooming that first engages public opinion? Verona Teenager Juliet, aged 13, lured
into tragic scheme of poison and knife-crime. Or would it be the failure of the church to prevent two
young deaths in their crypt that sparks scrutiny? Or would the house of Montague and Capulet be
that of Kardashian nature, filming their dispute with a Jeremy Kyle styled Netflix special or perhaps
conflicting Oprah interviews a la Meghan and Harry, and so it’s the television studios that would
come under-fire for their post-production care? Romeo and Juliet is a story re-told and re-told. We
come back to it due to its archetypal story of love. Love boundless, manifested as a get-out card for
two teens who are desperately searching for something good amidst conflict. I find the play moving. I
don’t dislike Romeo and, sometimes, I even relate to his yearning for something so beautifully
romantic, something otherworldly. What really strikes me about this play is the inevitability of death.
Romeo and Juliet were always going to die. Shakespeare tells us so, in the prologue. He spoils his
story’s ending. Why? Because Romeo and Juliet’s fate was to be tragic, as though, for some reason,
these two young people, so full of feeling, who finished each-other’s sonnets and who became so
caught up in the serotonin of love, were marked by death itself. And once this is understood, the
reading of Romeo and Juliet becomes utterly different. Two young people, scarred by their family
conflict and unable to handle large emotions, on a whirlwind through their first love, become unable
to cope. The feelings are too much for them. And, whilst on the face of the story, it appears that
Romeo and Juliet die because they can’t live without the other, underneath, they die because they
choose to. They are troubled. Suicidal. Something chemical inside of their brains, in their genetic
make-up, means that they take on the world’s turbulences and find it impossible to carry on. The
fluffy, over-the-top, attention seeking remarks of Romeo’s about the depth of his feelings, therefore,
and the unfair management of Juliet from her father, her inability to escape, create a dark backdrop
to the tragedy. Could it even be suggested that the balcony, so often regarded as a romantic highlight
of the play, hints at something much sinister in it’s lofty position?

Jamie Lloyd will no doubt have his own take on the show, with his choice of ‘violent delights have
violent ends’ as the quote that accompanies the show’s publicity. We shall find out what fate awaits
for Tom Holland, who returns to the west-end as Romeo for 12 weeks at the Duke of York’s Theatre
this May.