I decided to use the text by Brooke that Shakespeare used as his source. After Juliet is a kind of doggerel because it has vitality and there is the potential for mischief in it. It's allowed to make a fool of itself occasionally. It gave me the freedom to leap off from the play and the film. Increasingly I want to write with music and an integral part of After Juliet is the music composed by Caleb Knightley and Adrian Howgate.

The climax of the play comes during an election to determine whether or not Rosaline or Petruchio (Tybalt's brother) will succeed Tybalt as the Prince or Princess of Cats. The election fails to have any results and the fate of the truce is left open-ended. [5] Comic relief is provided by two Capulet boys with boastful, braggardly conversations, written with an ear for the bard and filled with wonderful non-sequiturs and played with a laddish teenage joie de vivre by Louis Wellings and Declan McElroy. She is also the author of two novels, The Beast (1986) and Night Night (1988), and wrote the screenplay for Wild Flowers (1989) for Channel 4 Television and the BBC Radio play Sea Urchins (1998). A further radio play, Gladly My Cross Eyed Bear, was broadcast in 1999. She wrote the libretto to Hey Persephone!, performed at Aldeburgh with music by Deirdre Gribbin. A 2009 youth, stage version of the show featured Valentine as the twin sister of Mercutio; this added an extra storyline where Valentine is in love with Benvolio and is jealous of Rosaline. Benvolio's final scene ends with Valentine running off stage after his rejection.Textbook approach. It’s the kind of move that Shakespeare himself might have gone for and she, oh she finishes it off with a hanky representing the blood. That is lovely. No need for fancy pants special effects and… As it turns out, Rosaline and Benvolio’s relationship (which is mostly one-sided) is such a small part of this short but fascinating work. This is more of an exploration of Rosaline’s thoughts following the tragedy and, even more broadly, the thoughts of Verona as a whole. Most of the scenes consist of the characters discussing the events of Shakespeare’s play and trying to make sense of them—who should be blamed for all of the recent deaths? Should the two families remain at peace, or is that a fruitless endeavor? Did Romeo and Juliet even really love each other? They don’t even bother to hide the jukebox. It’s right there, out in the open, before the show starts: a chrome Cyclops glowering at you from the stage of the Stephen Sondheim Theater, of all places. The two lovers are dead and the Prince has forced peace upon the two households, the Capulets and the Montagues, but as everyone knows too well an enforced truce is barely a truce at all.

The Girl With Red Hair (2003) has been highly acclaimed. Once again, it explores mother-daughter love in a Scottish coastal setting, though this time it is more tragic: 17-year-old Roslyn, the red-headed girl of the title, has been killed in a car accident a year previously, and the play explores not only the devastating grief of her mother, but the impact on the whole community. The intensity of the subject-matter is lightened by touches of humour and the gradual suggestion that the bereaved may begin to heal, learn to love again and move forward with their lives. Now after the lovers' plot and tragedy is uncovered she is angry with everything – with Juliet for having stolen her love, with Romeo for having betrayed her, with the Prince for having forced peace between the families, with her fellow Capulets for observing the peace. All in all a lively and affecting performance of a play that might well, however, be less interesting if it wasnt already stood on the shoulders of a giant. The play centres on Rosaline, Juliet's cousin and Romeo's ex-flame. Ironically, Rosaline had been in love with Romeo, but was playing "hard to get". Tortured by the loss of her love, Rosaline has become a sullen, venomous woman. She actively seeks to be elected the 'Princess of Cats' and run the Capulet family. Playwright and novelist Sharman Macdonald was born in Glasgow in 1951. Educated at the University of Edinburgh, she graduated in 1972 and moved to London where she acted with the 7:84 theatre company and at the Royal Court Theatre. While she was working as an actress, she wrote her first play, When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout (1985), first performed at the Bush Theatre in 1984. The play won the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.Presenter: Oh and an inspired touch! I don’t think anybody saw that shot coming! Super special effects skill from the director there. Well played my son!

I could have used a bit more brain, though; “& Juliet” sometimes seems suspicious of its own intelligence, like a nerd invited to the cool kids’ party, only to get drunk and vomit in the pool.

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As a result, it is difficult for me to dwell on performances, which largely did not arrest us; I do not think this was always the fault of the performers, since I sensed there was a great deal of talent which could not fully blossom within the confines of the production. Some rose above it, however. First and foremost, Robert Drummer as Valentine: here is an assured, stylish, confident actor, with a fine presence and strong natural delivery, who created interest. Josh Duhigg ran him a close second as Benvolio; again, this actor has presence and command - also a stillness of movement and delivery, two valuable assets. After Juliet is a play written by Scottish playwright Sharman Macdonald. [1] It was commissioned for the 2000 [2] Connections programme, in which regional youth theatre groups compete to stage short plays by established playwrights. Director: That’s great. I really liked the way you did that. It is quite out there. And I just slightly worry that we might be alienating the audience too much so, if it’s alright with you I’d like to just try something else.

Lady Capulet tells Juliet about Capulet’s plan for her to marry Paris on Thursday, explaining that he wishes to make her happy. Juliet is appalled. She rejects the match, saying “I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear / It shall be Romeo—whom you know I hate— / Rather than Paris” (3.5.121–123). Capulet enters the chamber. When he learns of Juliet’s determination to defy him, he becomes enraged and threatens to disown Juliet if she refuses to obey him. When Juliet entreats her mother to intercede, her mother denies her help. With Shakespeare’s two most famous protagonists dead, playwright Sharman Macdonald shifts the spotlight onto Juliet’s cousin Rosaline, played by a fittingly sardonic Mary Butler. Rosaline, devastated by Romeo’s death (she was his first crush before Juliet entered the picture), seethes with bitter resentment – director Maddy Trépanier highlights the possible feminist readings of her character: Rosaline seems to be saying, “I’m just as crazy, disruptive, neurotic, obsessive, as any man – watch what I can do.” Although it is entitled "After Juliet", it seemed to me to be also "before"Juliet (particularly as Rosaline, Romeo's ex-girl friend featured so prominently), and also "during"Juliet, with extracts from Shakespeare's play occurring frequently, the scene between Friar Laurence and Romeo in Act II being included almost verbatim. We also had "do you bite your thumb at me?"which you will find in the opening of R & J. These anachronisms are funny, but they’re also disorienting; Trépanier wants the audience to “feel like they’re in a world which they once understood, but has since been subverted – which is essentially what the characters are feeling as well”. The production team have expanded on this anachronistic aesthetic by mixing the 16th century Italian setting with elements from 1950s post-war Italy. That period, much like the aftermath of Romeo and Juliet’s suicides, is one in which society is supposed to be evolving, yet all the old structures are still in place, and no-one knows quite what they’re supposed to do with themselves any more.She has some excellent long speeches, which remind the listener of the Shakespearean voice, which is inconsistently (though probably rightly) sounded in the play. In After Juliet the embargo on weapons is being enforced but the feud between the young Capulets and Montagues is simmering. Rosaline, convinced that there should be fighting, raids the tomb to get the only swords available. Implacable Valentine does the same so that when the new Prince of Cats is elected, ‘the days will breathe again.’ Rosaline forces the Capulets to choose between peace and war. After she is elected Princess of Cats, she fights Valentine with total conviction. However, she is unable to sustain her animosity when Benvolio takes up the fight and simply challenges her to kill him. She is not exactly enthusiastic in response to Benvolio’s passion but at least she takes his hand and promises that, in the spring, she will wear that special green dress that he liked, pale, pale green. Hannah McIntosh as Alice was too fidgety, especially with her hair, which started to irritate after a while, and she did not completely suggest the brainless vamp. Again, I sensed she could do so, and needed a stronger guiding hand. This 1999 play by Sharman MacDonald is set in the immediate wake of the events that Shakespeare details in his Most Excellent And Lamentable Tragedy Of Romeo And Juliet (oh, they dont write titles like that anymore).