Juliet And Romeo – Crescent Theatre, Birmingham

Writer: William Shakespeare

Adaptor and Director: Nathalie Bazan

Lying Lips Theatre has past form in not shying away from tackling some of the most demanding, often harrowing, texts in the theatrical canon, not least Hecuba, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, The Tempest and The Crucible. A highly attuned and disciplined ensemble cast led by the whip-crack vision of adaptor and director, Nathalie Bazan makes no mistake. So, as a bit of distraction, then, leaning more towards gang violence, drug use and underage sex in the mode of the Bard, they bring their unique panache to the greatest love story ever told.

Drawing their name from Proverbs 12:22 – ‘Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight.’ (KJV) might just be being a bit previous in the humility department but, Lord, do they but not mightily deliver with the goods, the lads’ and the ugly – an abomination most certainly not. Lips, true or false being subtly apposite given that there is one of Shakespeare’s most enchanting lovers’ tease and tempting dialogues between tonight’s giddy, innocent ingenue Juliet, Lydia Ruth (of whom very much more later) the clue being in the revised title Juliet and Romeo), and the muscular and seemingly Celtic brogue brouhaha of Dan Trifunovic’s Romeo. The title reversal to Juliet and Romeo speaks volumes. Trifunovic stays close to his brief as the air-headed, overindulged, impulsive brat-boy. It is Juliet who provides a much more rounded and complex character with Lydia Ruth running with it for all it’s worth and then some.

Given that Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 wild-card, incandescent, high-octane paced adaptation of the text was looser and more outrageously bottom-pinching gooser than anything else dared since Peter Brooke’s very naughty, early 1970s saucy take on Midsummer Night’s Dream – Lips need to be hot off the mark if they want to stock some shock – which of course they do with the most outré élan as is their trademark.

The early Dance-Tranz burlesque banquet scene threatens to establish a decidedly Drag Queen aesthetic brought into sharp relief with Max Gibbon’s Nurse, all camp, sloppy lipstick and slap – the jumble sale reject pink basque accessory offset by a gorilla-grade hairy chest. Only near to the fatal denouement does the affectatious mask fall away and the reality of events impact on his suppressed humanity.

After the slighly deranged pre-performance projection of archive footage of a Circus ring montage of acrobats and humiliated animals and the banquet, Bazan allows Shakespeare’s divine text time to breathe. Act 1/Sc 5 has the seemingly gauche Juliet and Romeo as newfound lovers teasing, exploring metaphorical exchanges that riff on devout pilgrims and tender kisses. She wryly observes that Romeo kisses ‘like the book’. So how does she know about that then? The ‘tender kiss’ quote is a solemn portent of Romeo’s poison suicide farewell over Juliet’s supposed ‘dead’ body – ‘And lips, O, you/The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss.’ There’s that lips motif again!

Impossible to name-check everyone in this highly talented, diverse and ridiculously young ensemble cast but Ross Gilby’s oleaginous, predatory Paris deserves mention if only for his departing triumphant ‘YES!’ when Capulet capitulates to his suitoring for Juliet’s hand in marriage. Likewise, Harry Brooks’ wildly interpretive take on Mercutio that riffs on a ganja-gangsta Jah-head loose cannon. Nick Hessling’s Capulet is a belligerent, corpulent, bull-whipping bully glued to the bottle, swaggering about like a tie-dyed Genghis Khan after a brown acid downer at Woodstock.

But with Lydia Ruth’s Juliet, the bar is being set very high indeed. Such confidence set against intense expressive élan and interpretive depth marks her as one to keep a very keen eye on. Final mention must go to Bazan’s exquisite lighting, where the influence of Carravaggio’s chiaroscuro marks out Juliet’s visceral dilemma with intense, austere tenderness. As ever, Lying Lips play all their wild cards with aplomb and heterodox abandon, betting everything on the house with a royal flush of Jokers and winning hands down.

Runs until 13 February 2026