Romeo and Juliet

The other Sunday afternoon I had the privilege of being allowed to watch the dress rehearsal of HAODS production of Romeo and Juliet. This unique project was part of the Horsham District Year of Culture, the purpose being to give local people of all ages the chance to be involved in performing one of Shakespeare’s plays which, in the current days, are seldom seen on a professional theatre stage. The principals rehearsed for some months but the bulk of the cast and crew came together for the first time that last weekend in the form of workshops. The enormous amount of work involved for this one off performance on that Sunday evening was amply worthwhile as the whole cast gave excellent interpretations of the Bard's famous love story.  For the benefit of many of you who, like me, may not have been involved with, or seen, this play, it is the story of instant love between two young people at the time of arranged marriages and also at a time when sword fighting was the normal way of solving disagreements.

Romeo, (Josh Watts) son of the House of Montague sees Juliet (Holly Morris) daughter of the House of Capulet and they fall in love and arrange an instant marriage despite the long standing feud between their families. Both these teenagers gave great performances especially Josh who took to sword fighting very well and showed love and anger with exceptional facial and body language.

Tess Kennedy gave a brilliant interpretation of Juliet’s nurse. She was loud, blousy and eminently watchable. Amelia Douglas and Alicia Marson as Tybalt and Mercutio came over outstandingly as young men determined to fight each other and Alex Brown performed equally convincingly as Romeo’s cousin and best friend Benvolio. Add to these young performers the polished performance of Kev Summers, Sue Tyrrell,  David Johnson and Hannah Wheatley as the parents and a good cast of other characters and in addition the Citizens of Verona, a very necessary group of performers making for excellent crowd scenes and, no wonder, this production was so good.

Sadly I missed the finale of the play as I had to leave slightly before the end but if the adage a good dress makes for a bad opening night then their evening performance would have to be poor.  I am quite sure that wasn’t the case. Two very impressive pieces that deserve a special mention was, one, the closing of Act one which was outstanding and secondly, the various death scenes, of which there were quite a few,  were very cleverly executed. Well done to everyone involved.

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