Issue 153

The greatest love story ever told

26th February 2007

The Drama Society's latest offering is Shakespeare's timeless tragedy Romeo and Juliet, yet with a more unorthodox twist. Mixing the old Shakespearian language with a contemporary setting has helped bring the play into the twenty-first century, and has been done so with imagination and pizzazz.

For directors Kate Burke and Rob Davies the play was designed to be, "more rough and ready." They wanted the play to focus more heavily on the gang culture that is portrayed, as well as the under pinning love story. It was also important that the play didn't resemble Baz Luhrmann's famous film adaptation of the production, which featured Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

The production that was certainly unlike the film version. By setting the location of the play on a British council estate, with a road aptly named Verona Close, it immediately lost any connection with the film, and really helped the audience to relate to the characters.

Gang culture is something that is very topical at the moment and they have managed to encapsulate the current social mood surrounding this issue, through a play that many may argue is out of date.

Much of the plays success can be attributed to its wonderful cast of 25 and the wide range of actors that took part is a credit to the direction of the play and also to those that made therirstage debuts. A further crucial part of the production was the backstage crew, which consisted of seven people, ranging from technical director to the stage hands. Interestingly they don't have anyone who does make-up or costume, director Kate told us, "no-one wanted to do it, so all the actors do there own props, make-up and costumes."

Tim Dredge took on the lead role of Romeo and managed to deal with the pressures that came with a leading role admirably, as a fresher this was his first major role in a production and one that he has taken in his stride. He is currently studying marketing and this is the first time that he has had a role in a production. Going into drama is something that he always wanted to do, "I went to a rough school, if I had taken up drama people would have thought I was gay!"

He was surprised at having being given the part, especially since he has no prior acting experience, despite this his stage presence is undeniable.

His counter part Lucy Gerber, who plays the infamous Juliet, also has a talent for acting, bringing to the light the emotion that the role demands. She is currently in her second year studying English; she got involved with the play after deciding that she wanted to get back into drama, as she did theatre studies for A-level and wanted to get back into acting. For her the role was, "very demanding" but she thoroughly enjoyed her experience which shone through in her performance.

This was yet another production from the Drama Society that has been a complete success, the amount of time and effort that the members of the society have put in is incredible and the result was well worth the effort. I can't wait to see what they produce next year.

If you would like any information about the society you can contact them at: uws_drama@hotmail.com

Dawn Lewis