Writer: Madeleine Carter
Director: Vilma Kitula
Throughout Romeo and Juliet, and indeed throughout its production history, the character of Mercutio has proved elusive. He is both the instigator of merriment and its life and soul; comical and wisecracking on the surface, dismissive of any of the romance with which Romeo fills his days. Neither Montague nor Capulet, it is nevertheless his death that affects Romeo so profoundly that he slays his friend’s killer, Tybalt – Juliet’s cousin – igniting all the events that follow.
Madeleine Carter reimagines Mercutio in Mabel, effectively creating an hour of the character delving into slam poetry, retelling key moments of his life as his real body falls, slain, to the floor. Carter, dressed androgynously to represent the man she is playing, presents a character for whom all the hard partying and even harder drinking is, inevitably, masking deeper pain.
That anguish revolves around Mabel, a busking musician who hangs around the same bars Mercutio, Benvolio and Romeo frequent. Olivia Catchpole reads in for Mabel from a seated position at the back of the space. Her language is more poetic than Mercutio’s, even though the latter often mimics the iambs of Shakespeare’s composition. Placing her off to one side also reinforces that we are not seeing a duo in conversation as such, more a monologue with interjection.
There’s also a puppet dog observing. Quite why is never clear – even when dogs crop up in Mercutio’s narration, the puppet is never quite involved – but it’s beautifully crafted, and ably manipulated by show director Vilma Kitula. The film Shakespeare in Love has a character suggest that audiences want “comedy, love, and a bit with a dog,” and if it’s a nod to that, it’s a fun one.
But mostly, it’s on Mercutio’s life. His Mabel becomes his queen, and with her comes the scary prospect of fatherhood. But her miscarriage affects them both deeply. Mercutio still involves himself with the lads – there is an intensely homoerotic reading of his relationship with Romeo (amplified by Catchpole reading in for him, too), which precipitates some unresolved jealousy when Juliet starts hanging out with the gang.
And so, as what has become known as “the Queen Mab speech” approaches, Carter’s intent becomes clear. Where directors sometimes portray Mercutio’s soliloquy as an improvised discourse discouraging Romeo from pursuing a path of love, here it becomes an outpouring of loss and grief. Mabel is his real-life Queen Mab – genuinely a midwife to fairies, but unable to carry her own child – and the speech’s digs about the futility of love come from a place of pain, rather than from someone who prefers hedonism.
That single point is the fulcrum around which the rest of the play balances. Everything before stands to justify the interpretation, and everything after is explained by it.
The rivalry between Tybalt and Romeo also deepens in Carter’s version of events, all set in a version of Verona full of pick-up trucks, nightclubs and broken windows. But as Mercutio’s life flashes before his eyes until the moment where he dies, it is this weirdest, most electrifying of Shakespeare’s side characters that finally feels as if he’s received some justice.
Runs until 20 September 2025
