At the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Published in Irish Theatre Magazine.

At the core of Jason Byrne’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a scene that is, more typically, neglected: Juliet’s feigned suicide.

It comes after a first half that bustles and bristles, theatre of swaying hips and preying hipsters. Then, after the interval, this early exuberance is allowed to drain like Tybalt’s blood.

For long minutes, our attention is focussed on Juliet’s bedchamber: first, the scene of a bizarrely modest post-coital embrace with Romeo, before he flees; then, the scene of tiresome familial wrangling between Juliet and her nurse and parents.

And then Juliet drinks her vial, and collapses. It goes dark. In darkness (though it is now morning), her nurse enters and finds her, and cries for help. Her mother enters, and then her father who stoops and gathers her in his arms. A dim halo of light rises on this scene of mourning. Then the Friar, and Paris, her intended. They set to keening. The light rises and falls between near-total darkness and a chiaroscuro focus on the scene around the bed. (Lighting is by Paul Keogan.)
Till now, director Jason Byrne’s references have been more contemporary, more obvious, more populist: Amy Winehouse on the soundtrack, costumes and choreography from ‘The Matrix’ and ‘A Clockwork Orange’. But his reference here is more classical: a Pietà. Juliet will rise again, but her family does not know it.

(Byrne employed a similar lighting design in his 2006 production of ‘The Duchess of Malfi’ with his company, Loose Canon, which was lit to give the effect of a Caravaggio.)

The scene speaks deeply of grief, and yet it is stylistically anachronistic within the overall production, and obscure within conventional approaches to the play: why focus on the grief, when we know that Juliet is not dead?

Byrne’s focus on grief here foreshadows the climactic scene in which the “pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life”. He plays this final scene atop a sarcophagus, which rises from underneath the stage in the place where Juliet’s bed has been, recognising that this scene is of more iconic than emotional value.

The Pietà of earlier haunts the production. It suggests a less conventional reading of the play: one that is not a homage to romantic love, but a study of adolescent suicide. (This is also suggested by Germaine Greer and Clare Keegan in incisive programme notes.)

That scene also suggests that Jason Byrne is less interested in grafting a cohesive whole than in rigorously exploring certain ideas and moments in the text – an approach that seems consistent with his earlier theatrical explorations with Loose Canon.

The whole on offer here is an entertaining and energetic account of the play, yet there is a shoddiness that leaves it less than convincing. The soundtrack may be stylistically apt, but it is abrupt and intrusive, unsure whether the music is itself a dramatic device (as in Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film of the play), or simply a mood-enhancing transition from one scene to the next. (Sound design is by Denis Clohessy.)

The fight and dance scenes are attractively choreographed, but poorly realised. Punches and feints fall visibly short, and the dance moves are at times more suggestive of an Irish disco than an R&B video. (Choreography is by Ella Clarke.) Much of the verse speaking suggests that, as with the dance and fight moves, the actors are keeping time in their heads.

This is surprising, because textual clarity was the supreme virtue of Jason Byrne’s early work on Shakespeare with Loose Canon. At that stage, he had something of an ensemble, and they poured immense energy into both getting the verse right, and finding ways to combine it with aggressively theatrical physicality. But the Abbey is a very different beast, lumbering and expensive where a small company in the 1990s was supple and cheap. This production suggests Byrne needs more rehearsal time. Still, there is vision and ambition here, and a density of thought that is exciting.

As Romeo, Aaron Monaghan is, as ever, restless and edgy. But he combines this with the most incisive, intuitive grasp of the verse of anyone on stage: he mangles the metre at will, realising that the most authentic verse speaking can come from those who pay least overt attention to its rhythm, or at least who play against it.

Gemma Reeves is an able Juliet, less idiosyncratic than Monaghan and more deferential to the verse, but supple and confident. Anita Reeves’s Nurse, Peter Gaynor’s Prince and Michael McElhatton’s Mercutio are each memorable.

‘Romeo and Juliet’ marks a step on for Jason Byrne from 2007’s ‘Julius Caesar’: more ambitious and aggressively theatrical, and more coherent. He has yet to really put his stamp on the Abbey stage, but this suggests that he will, with time – and, perhaps, with more rehearsal time.

Romeo and Juliet
By William Shakespeare
At the Abbey Theatre, Dublin
Directed by Jason Byrne
With Aaron Monaghan, Gemma Reeves and Anita Reeves
Set & costume by Jon Bausor
Lighting by Paul Keogan
Music & sound design by Denis Clohessy
6 Feb – 22 March
Reviewed on 14 February 2008