Romeo and Julie is the perfect romcom for the National Theatre crowd
Romeo and Julie is the tale of two star crossed lovers from Splott, Cardiff, whose forbidden love threatens to tear apart two houses not particularly alike in dignity.
We first meet the tragic hero elbowdeep in a soiled nappy. This Romeo is a working class, 18-year-old single dad struggling to raise the baby he couldn’t bear to put up for adoption, despite its mother wanting nothing to do with them, and his own mother being a chaotic alcoholic.
His life is transformed when he meets the precocious Julie, an aspirational working class lass from the other side of the tracks, who’s set on studying physics at Cambridge. Clearly his intellectual superior, she nevertheless falls for the doting young father, whose unlikely parenting skills and awkward charm is enough to distract her from her physics textbook.
Gary Owen and Rachel O’Riordan’s play is a riff on Shakespeare rather than a modern take on it, using the recognisable story beats to examine class, austerity and the good people who fall through the cracks in places like Splott.
While the script is brimming with cliches – Julie is the first in her family to attend university; her father is a steel worker with a pair of busted lungs – the writing is so sincere and the comedy so well judged that a reliance on archetypes is easily forgiven.
And it’s anchored by genuinely wonderful performances, especially Callum Scott Howells and Rosie Sheehy in the leads. Their quick-fire dialogue is laugh-out-loud funny and they share a steamy sexual chemistry.
Both heartwarmingly nice and tearjerkingly sad, Romeo and Julie is the perfect romcom for the National Theatre crowd.