By any other name

Auckland Theatre Company's Romeo and Juliet is set in the 1960s and toys with sex and gender. But its director claims it remains true to Shakespeare.

- DIONNE CHRISTIAN

When Benjamin Kilby-Henson describes his version of Romeo and Juliet, it's tempting to wonder how much of Shakespeare's play is left. To begin with, Romeo and Juliet aren't the only star-crossed lovers in the Auckland Theatre Company production he's directing this month: Romeo's friends Benvolio and Mercutio are also a couple. And there's no Lady Montague or Lord Capulet.

As the children of single parents, Romeo and Juliet have deeper bonds with surrogate parental figures like their nurse (her) and the sagacious Friar Lawrence (him) - although Friar Lawrence is Whaea Lawrence (played by Miriama McDowell), an aunt-like figure who hangs out in a greenhouse and is more an Earth Mother than a Spiritual Father.

And rather than keep the action in Renaissance Verona, it's set in a once-grand 1960s Italy where the characters wear Missoni and Pucci-inspired fashion. No word on whether Vespa motor scooters make an appearance, but it wouldn't be a surprise.

What is a surprise is hearing Kilby-Henson saying he created this world without changing many of Shakespeare's words and went into the production aiming to make it as authentic as possible.

“I haven't had to manipulate any of the text, and that was really important to me. We've made some cuts here and there to references that just don't hold up as strongly today as they might have done back then, but this is a really faithful treatment of Shakespeare's text. Honouring that has been a big goal for this production.”

Indeed, Kilby-Henson believes there's real danger in directors thrusting a concept on top of Shakespeare. He sees it as the director's job to honour the story and find a sympathetic backdrop for it to unfold within. After all, Shakespeare was more or less doing the same thing, he says.