Mike McCahill 

Broadway’s Romeo & Juliet review – ‘Disastrous teenbait casting’

Orlando Bloom is unexpectedly dextrous with the verse, but plays insufferably to the crowd in this record of last year's Broadway outing, writes Mike McCahill
  
  

Broadway's Romeo and Juliet
So nearly likable … Broadway's Romeo and Juliet. Photograph: PR

As a film, this record of last year's starry-eyed Shakespeare-for-kids staging at New York's Richard Rodgers theatre is inevitably limited by the proscenium. As a production, it might have been rather likable - pacy and scampering, updating the now-standard gangland setting with EDM and ebony-ivory lovers - were it not for some disastrous teenbait casting. Though Orlando Bloom displays unexpected dexterity with the verse, his constant crowd-courting lends Romeo's every amorous declaration the sincerity of a bathroom-shot Tinder selfie. We buy that Condola Rashad's callow Juliet might fall for this preening oik, but if he showed up under any other balcony, there wouldn't be a vat of hot piss big enough.

 

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