Wildly successful adaptation of Romeo and Juliet returns to the stage
A 21st-century update of a Shakespeare classic returns to Flemish theatres, three years after it drew rave responses from both teenagers and their parents
Forbidden love, revisited
Ironically, it’s just because the young director didn’t stray from the original text that the performance is so refreshing. A story that’s been told again and again doesn’t necessarily need fancy ornaments or plot changes, as long as it is able to translate the original emotions.
Featuring a cast of young actors, an effective lighting design by Mark Van Denesse and a music score by the talented jazz drummer Jens Bouttery, Romeo en Julia evokes the leaping hearts and the grandeur of a forbidden love that’s about to be torn apart.
Last year, while creating a reality-based monologue about the closing of car manufacturer Ford in Genk, De Vos said: “There was only one condition to do this: Everything we said had to be true.” The result was a boulevard — or rather an empty car park — of crashed illusions, but also a heartwarming story about loyalty and solidarity.
That is a sort of mission for Sermoen, the theatre company De Vos established in 2007 while still studying at the theatre academy in Maastricht: Trying to evoke the true nature of the world, in all its complexity (and sometimes innate cruelty), without losing an eye for basic and universal feelings such as compassion.
This production suggests that youth are entitled to hold up a mirror to the world, at its best and at its worst.
Until 4 February at Het Paleis, Antwerp
Romeo en Julia tours Genk, Kortrijk and Brussels later in February
Photo by Kurt Van der Elst
