Romeo and Juliet, Tobacco Factory Theatres ★★★★

There are few directors alive who have spent more time in Shakespeare’s rehearsal rooms than Gregory Doran. After a lifetime inside these plays, culminating in his tenure leading the RSC, it feels entirely fitting that his Romeo and Juliet for Bristol Old Vic Theatre School begins not in Verona but in a rehearsal room. A floor marked out with tape. Costume pieces waiting to be claimed. Young actors circling one of the most famous stories ever written, trying on characters in the same way they try on bits of costume. It is a concept that sounds self-consciously theatrical on paper, but in practice allows Doran to do what he does best: illuminate Shakespeare through clarity rather than reinvention. Aldo Vázquez’s design gradually allows two worlds to collide. Contemporary rehearsal clothes, jorts, trainers and vests slowly accumulate ruffs and rehearsal skirts, fragments of Elizabethan costume appearing as though the play is materialising around the actors. The production never fully…

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