ROMEO & JULIET/ KENNETH BRANAGH’S ROMEO & JULIET

UK, 2016, 140 minutes, Black and white.
Lily James, Richard Madden, Derek Jacobi, Meera Syal, Marisa Berenson.
Directed by Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh.

In 2015-2016, Kenneth Branagh’s theatre company spent a year at the Garrick Theatre in London with such productions as A Winter’s Tail and The Entertainer. This version of Romeo and Juliet was part of the season.

Kenneth Branagh introduces the film and highlights how he was influenced by the style of the Italian films of the 1950s, where he sets the play, especially the black-and-white photography of films like La Dolce Vita of Federico Fellini. This version is filmed in black and white widescreen. Given the austerity of the stage set, flat space, steps, pillars, it works very well.

Branagh himself does not appear but he has changed the subsidiary character of Mercutio into a swinging man in his mid-70s in the form of Derek Jacobi who presents the Queen Mab speech with great elocution as a series of images. He also literally jive-swings onto the scene, has a stick with a sword, and adds boom-boom to his witticisms. Perhaps not so persuasive with the sword and the confrontation with Tybalt, but it is an interesting variation on the character.

Also interesting is British stage, screen and television actress and comedian, Meera Syal (The Kumars at number 42) as the down-to-earth nurse. And Marisa Berenson, perhaps best known for Barry Lyndon, is Lady Capulet.

The casting of Romeo and Juliet is the important central feature. Branagh had directed Lily James and Richard Madden in the cinema version of Cinderella, a very successful adaptation of the fairytale. Richard Madden looks the part but, somehow or other, is not as strong as he might be and, while he is a stage presence, his delivery somehow or other lacks the oomph and articulate a rendering of the verse by other performers of the role. in contrast, Lily James is very good as Juliet, young and inexperienced, doing a cartwheel across the stage, and (with audience response divided in opinion) swigging from a bottle of wine during the balcony sequence – and later having hiccups when she is nervous. However, she delivers her lines strikingly and holds the stage in the latter part of the performance.

The action moves fairly quickly, not all that much attention given to the brawling in the streets of Verona, moving the action with Friar Lawrence and the potions rapidly – and Juliet progressing, perhaps too rapidly, from young teenager to wife.

There have been many versions of Romeo and Juliet, including the Leslie Howard- Norma Shearer version of 1934, a much older couple; Laurence Harvey and Susan Shental in 1954; Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting in Zeffirelli’s 1968 version; Leonardo Di Caprio and Claire Danes in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet; Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld in a less than sparkling 2013 version.

The filming of thid version was by director Benjamin Caron who also directed the three Wallander films in the fourth series.