Brighton

These comments are the assistant director’s thoughts and ideas about the process of touring 'Romeo and Juliet'; they may change as this process progresses.

Notes from Canterbury ...

We arrived at the venue early and began unloading the stage. The camper van did not arrive with us. By the time we were done assembling the deck, it still hadn't arrived. We came to learn that On Time towing had showed up on time but no one from the last venue had been there to help move the van into position. After a few frantic phone calls arrangements were made to get it sorted and On Time towing eventually brought the van - four hours late.

Across the road from St. Nicolas's Church lies an old graveyard now commonly used as a public rest garden. During the course of Romeo and Juliet, the play undergoes a transition from comedy to tragedy. During the course of an evening performance, there is also a transition from sunny day to dusk and darkness. We knew in advance that we would be performing in a cemetery and that this would likely add an eerie quality to the second half of the play. What we didn't know was just how many lines would resonate so strongly with the audience in that setting, full of old graves, as darkness descended over the performance.

An old wooden door in the high south wall of the cemetery served as a reference point for the Friar's cell (It suited so well that Conrad posed for a photograph, joking that it was for the cover of Friar's Monthly). In front of the wall were several large, ornate mausoleums, perfect representations of the Capulets’ monument. I asked that the Friar and Juliet, who both make references to the Capulets’ monument in the play, choose one of the on-site monuments between them so that they had a specific point of focus for delivering their lines: 'Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault / Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.' (Friar Lawrence, IV.i.111-112), and '… make the bridal bed / In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.' (Juliet, III.v.200-201).

Shakespeare makes many references to death that were all certainly supported by the graveyard environment, but for me the most vividly captivating moment, sitting there surrounded by broken graves, was Juliet's speech as she debates whether or not to take the Friar's potion:

How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? There's a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where for these many hundred years the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
Where bloody Tybalt yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;
Alack, alack! Is it not like that I
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad -
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears,
And madly play with my forefathers’ joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains? (IV.iii.30-54)

I believed that she saw the 'spirits resort' all around her, around all of us, so by the time she cried 'O look, methinks I see my cousin's ghost / Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body / Upon a rapier's point! Stay, Tybalt, stay!' (IV.iii.55-57) I think we all saw Tybalt's ghost and some by that point probably wished they hadn't; we all certainly felt an unnerving chill down our spine and hoped, with Juliet, that he stayed away.

As we were drawn into the final scene, as Romeo prepared to enter Juliet's tomb his threat to Balthazar to stay behind or else he would '… strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs.' (V.iii.36) clearly placed the scene within our actual surroundings and held us there until the end of the play. As the Friar rushed in to try to get to the lovers before it was too late, he struggled amongst real tombstones as he exclaimed 'How oft have my old feet stumbled at graves?' (V.iii.122). The 'glooming peace' (V.iii.304) at the end of the play was gloomy indeed…

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