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ROMEO & JULIET: West End vs Broadway | Discussing the Tom Holland and Kit Connor / Rachel Zegler productions
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Mickey Jo
Two productions, both alike in dignity and ticket sales, and different in just about everything else. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am also a professional theatre critic here on social media who has the joy and privilege of reviewing theatre internationally. In which capacity earlier this year I headed to the Duke of York's Theatre in London's West End and bought a ticket to see the new production of Romeo and Juliet directed by Jamie Lloyd. I then shared my many thoughts about that production here on YouTube. And then a few months later I saw another high profile production of the same William Shakespeare tragedy, this time over on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre, directed by Sam Gold. That one I was invited to review and again I have shared my full thoughts on that right here on YouTube. So if you want to know what I thought about each production in detail, you can go and check out those videos. But today we're going to be doing a little bit of a compare and contrast, looking at many different details about the production, looking at the direction, looking at the design, looking at the performances, and looking at how they were received by critics, including myself. And I'm choosing to look at these two different productions because there are interesting things that they have in common in terms of how they were built, in terms of the young rising stars of Scream that they have at their center, in terms of the visionary directors at the helm of each one. But the end result in each instance ended up being completely different. These productions are so far apart from each other, despite being the same source material. And I'm not suggesting that this is the first time this has happened with Shakespeare. Certainly in London alone you can see dozens of different productions of the same William Shakespeare play within the space of 12 months. But I think there is a lot to learn from these conspicuously different productions, one of which I really loved and one of which I did not. So strap in. Today we are going to be taking a deep dive into the many similarities and differences between Romeo and Juliet and Romeo and Juliet. Now, if you enjoy today's video, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel if you haven't already. I share many more videos just like this. Talking about the theatre, reviewing the shows that I have been to go and see, talking about theatre news, and just occasionally taking you along to the with me and vlog style content. If that sounds like something that you might enjoy, make sure to subscribe and turn on the notifications somewhere below my face. So YouTube lets you know, whenever I've shared a new theater themed video. Also, if you have seen this production of Romeo and Juliet currently running at the Circum the Square on Broadway, or if you saw the West End production starring Tom Holland, or if you've seen a different production previously to all of this. I've seen, I think 5 Romeo and Juliets in my lifetime and honestly, I could be done. Be sure to share all of your thoughts about those in the comments. For now though, let's get into it. Romeo and Juliet, West End vs Broadway so let's begin by talking about what these productions ostensibly had in common, which was the casting approach and the way that they were produced. In each instance. These were big new productions of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet direct to the theaters that they would play in, straight to the West End and straight to Broadway without any off broad way off West End or regional tryout first. This isn't unusual with new productions of classic plays, certainly not in London where Shakespeare is produced everywhere. We have not only Shakespeare's Globe and then outside of London, the Royal Shakespeare Company dedicatedly bringing much of the Bard's work to their stage every year, but also venues like the Donmar Warehouse and the Almeida and the National Theater and many more places producing lots of Shakespeare every single year, as well as Shakespeare in the commercial West End, which is what this was on Broadway in New York. Meanwhile, it's a little rarer to see Shakespeare Shakespeare produced, and it's even rarer to see it directed by anyone other than Sam Gold, who has previously directed Broadway productions of Macbeth and King Lear, as well as off Broadway stagings of Hamlet and Othello. But it's the casting where you can really draw comparisons here, because both of these productions became very hot tickets because of their leading performers. Now, the West End production came first, and it was announced that Tom Holland would be playing Romeo in a substantial stage return for him since becoming a huge Hollywood name starring as Spider man in various Marvel Cinematic Universe films as well as a handful of other subsequent screen projects. He is very much an A list movie star at this point, and he has been on stage before. I say stage return because he was one of several young performers to play Billy Elliot as a child actor, but this production constituted a significant adult, professional stage return for him. Now initially it was only his casting that was announced and people found this a little dubious. After all, the players called Romeo and Juliet and they wondered who would be playing Juliet opposite him. And this production was directed by Jamie Lloyd, who often centers a celebrity at the heart of his work, just like in the ongoing revival of Sunset Boulevard, which has recently transferred to Broadway starring Nicole Scherzinger. And once Jamie has this star in place, he usually surrounds them with a lot of very talented rising stars from a theatrical background who are less broadly known. True enough, the role of Juliet went to Francesca Amawuda Rivers, a rising star from the London theater scene who hasn't been in Marvel movies. And the tactic here, ostensibly from Jamie Lloyd, is to leverage a certain amount of celebrity status to sell a lot of tickets so that he can then platform a wider array of actors. I should briefly touch on a disgraceful amount of racist abuse that was directed towards Francesca in response to her casting and for several weeks afterwards, a legitimately heinous response to the casting of A Young Woman of Color opposite Tom Holland. It's worth saying as well, many of those hurling this horrible racist abuse had no idea this was even a stage production. They thought it was a film remake. Heading over to Broadway meanwhile, where they had a slightly different approach and not only one screen star, but two, because Rachel Zegler would make her long anticipated Broadway debut playing Juliet opposite rising star Kit Connor as Romeo. She is perhaps best known for starring as Maria in the recent Steven Spielberg directed film remake of west side Story. She's also been seen in other projects since and will soon be seen as Snow White in the upcoming Disney remake. Kit Connor, meanwhile, best known to audiences as a fan favorite from Heartstopper, which he stars in on Netflix alongside Joe Locke, who has also this year been perpetrating his Broadway stage debut. He starred in Sweeney Todd. But Kit Connor has certainly been eyed for various stage vehicles since the success of Heartstopper. And for some reason, even if these performers have a theatrical background that could be considered musical. Even though he had come to prominence in this beautiful coming of age queer teenage love story, even though Tom Holland gained fame for starring in superhero movies, inevitably when these young men get famous and then head back to the stage, it's always Shakespeare. And it's interesting because Kit appeared as young Elton John in the film Rocketman. Tom Holland, we know, is an accomplished dancer. Rachel Zegler is obviously bound for Broadway musicals at some point, but to maintain some sort of that screen actor status, it's always Shakespeare they seem to do first. A slightly puzzling choice, but this casting meant that both productions became super hot tickets before anyone had seen them, before they had been reviewed. Regardless of the quality of the piece or what they would actually do with the material, they were always going to sell. Well, which leads us to our next comparison, the overall vibes of the thing. Now, as each of these productions were announced for the stage, they began with very different marketing approaches and a very different way of framing this famous story. We can, to a certain extent, take it for granted that everyone is familiar with the basic premise of Romeo and Juliet, not only because the text itself is so old, but also because it's been adapted into so many different things. And we have seen the Romeo and Juliet tragic love story trope appropriated throughout media. Now, the West End production opted for this dark, brooding black and red aesthetic, using a line from the text, violent delights have violent ends, evidently centering itself among the more grim and gruesome and intense dark aspects of the story. While the Broadway production went for something quite different, a little bit more Gen Z, a little bit more contemporary. They shared a music video of the young stars, Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor, and throughout the early stages of announcement, really capitalized on their fame and their fan base, with the slogan for this production eventually emerging as the youth are. And both of these framings of the different productions do summarize what they were like to a certain extent, going back to the West End one. It was very dark, it was very brooding, it was very intense. But violent may have been a little bit misleading here, because in the actual production that ended up arriving on the stage, violence is not something that was shown overtly. That is to say, we didn't really see combat. We saw conflict. We saw tension. We saw sort of simmering rage. But in true Jamie Lloyd style, which we will discuss in a moment when we talk about the direction and the staging, rather than showing the actors actually coming to blows or fighting with swords or anything more traditionally Shakespearean or even a more contemporary style of fighting, what would happen is, at a moment of combat, the lights would black out and then would be turned back on and someone would be covered in blood. The Broadway production, meanwhile, did show combat and tussling, but that wasn't really its main focus, because what that version seemed to uplift more than anything else was this sense of youthfulness, was how young and foolish and romantic these characters were. There is a considerable darkness to Romeo and Juliet that that really chose not to look at. And this is where the comparison, I think, gets super interesting, because they really are like two sides of the same coin. And that's what's great about Romeo and Juliet, is it is simultaneously portraying these two different things. You have this story about these two rival households who have this ancient grudge. They hate each other, and they feud with each other, and eventually there is bloodshed because of this animosity. But alongside and in spite of that, you have their youngest generations, their children, who fall in love against their better judgment. It's this love that can come out of hate. It's the promise of a better future amidst conflict for all sorts of different communities. And while the West End production of Romeo and Juliet really diluted this sense of passion and love, not having Romeo and Juliet really connect to each other or embrace or kiss or be overtly romantic, choosing instead to focus on the feud and the conflict and the resentment and the grudge and the despair of it all, the Broadway production lost the sense of that grudge between the families and that tension which ran throughout, and instead really lent into the love and the passion and the euphoria that these two young people felt. Each production would eventually reach the same conclusion, but like I said, it's a really compelling case study for what a director can choose to bring out of a story, which leads us to the very different directing and staging styles. Now let's talk about the West End. To begin with. This was directed by Jamie Lloyd, who has been for several years making a name for himself with these bold, visionary takes on classic works. Prior to Romeo and Juliet, prior to Sunset Boulevard, prior to his collaborations with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, which are upcoming, Jamie Lloyd worked on a lot of pin to plays. He had a whole season of pin to plays, this being one of the first times he really stripped everything back to its most essential components. Very little costuming, very little color, very little scenery. And in place of all of those things, he has a handful of other techniques that he likes to dedicatedly use, including the use of handheld microphones, seen most prominently in his production of Cyrano, starring James McAvoy. He also tends to be a big fan of covering people in blood. We've seen this as early as his production of Urinetown in its European premiere. He did also utilize it in a version of Sondheim's Assassins at the Meniere Chocolate Factory, although the blood there was confetti rather than literal blood. Cut to Romeo and Juliet. They have handheld microphones. They have a lot of literal blood that they're covered in, even if we don't see where it comes from. Not dissimilar to Sunset Boulevard, but we also heavily featured his favorite new toy as well, which is the use of onstage cameras and a large screen that they feed live video footage to. Sometimes this is captured on the stage, sometimes this is captured backstage. Sometimes this makes headlines for being captured outside of the theater itself for Sunset Boulevard. Spoiler alert for that production. This is a moment at the top of the second act where a camera operator within the cast follows the actor playing Joe Gillis around the perimeter of the theater or on Broadway, across the street and back, while he is singing the first song of the second act. And this was all anyone was talking about when Sunset Boulevard was at the Savoy Theatre in the West End. They recreated a version of this at the Olivier Awards that April. So when Romeo and Juliet was opening just a few weeks after this had happened, everyone was very curious about how they were going to exceed that moment. And I think that both directors, Jamie Lloyd, as well as the video team made up of Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom, who recently won the stage debut award for their work on Sunset Boulevard, also felt that pressure to exceed expectation and outdo their previous camera work. It's presumably for this reason that they decided to have Tom Holland filmed on the roof of the Duke of York's Theater during a pivotal moment towards the end of the play. Now, rumors suggest that this was originally going to be filmed via drone, but very shortly before the first performance, which had to be cancelled in the West End, possibly for this very reason, Westminster City Council said, yeah, we're not gonna do that. And there are a whole host of legitimate reasons why they may have wanted to shut this down. Instead, they installed this very sophisticated long camera arm that could film him on the roof while still being installed stationary on the roof. A moment I personally found a little bit baffling. But then I saw a matinee which was not quite as picturesque as having him have this distraught moment of grief stricken realization with night sky behind him. Instead, it was the middle of the day and you could kind of make out London landmarks now. The same bold aesthetic scene in Sunset Boulevard was also seen in Jamie Lloyd's Romeo and Juliet. Everyone was wearing this contemporary, quite muted street wear, costuming. Everything was very black and white. Tom Holland had a very contemporary haircut. He was in a white vest. There was no easy sense of distinguishing between the members of different households. There were also not that many people in the company. And in terms of how the actual text was delivered, everything was played with this kind of a brooding ASMR intensity because of the use of handheld microphones, where everyone had them this close to their face at various times. Another Jamie Lloyd direction style was utilized, where the actors would stand facing the audience rather than directing their dialogue to each other and simply speak forwards. And strangely, this is how two of Romeo and Juliet's most pivotal scenes were played in their balcony scene where Romeo and Juliet's actions and speech towards each other is characterized by a longing to be closer together. And this literal and figurative distance between them being very significant. They were just standing close to each other on stage, able to reach out and touch each other if they wanted to, and then spoiler alert when they both die towards the end of the play, both because they believed the other to be dead first. They did this simply while sat cross legged next to each other, facing forwards at the front of the stage. I should add as well that what little set we had was very red with a set of bars in front of the thing. Initially over on Broadway with Sam Gold's production, meanwhile, other than the fact that they were telling the same story, it was a completely different story. This production, which is staged in the round at Broadway's Only in the Round Theater, the Circle in the Square, began with the actors casually sauntering out during a pre show and sitting on different pieces of furniture. Think beanbags and inflatables, someone in a shopping trolley pushing each other around, laughing, joking and chilling before beginning the performance. The framing device for which was we were introduced to the actors by name and told the roles that they would be playing via one performer who was holding, guess what, a handheld microphone. But a handheld microphone with a very different purpose. This was Gabby Beans who played the here combined roles of Mercutio and the Friar. And rather than the microphone allowing the actors to deliver everything in these strained, hushed, intense, brooding tones, instead it made the whole thing feel joyous and large and like a party, like a disco, like a dance floor. A little bit like ballroom culture if we want to take it there. Gabby Beans was the MC introducing all of the actors who would be appearing in the production saying, this is Rachel, she's playing Julia. And then she would run around while everyone was screaming. It's a very theater kid drama class kind of a commencement. But what's key here is that that kick started the show with a completely different energy to the one in London. Now, in terms of the way that Sam Gold approached this production, there was a lot more humor that was found in it. Even in moments of conflict and combat, even in these altercations between members of these two different households. He found a way to make it down to earth and funny and more importantly, accessible. This is one of the biggest differences between the two productions, is the way that action and dialogue were framed, made everything easy to understand. And this is very important and I'm going to tell you why. And it's because of this casting. As a result of casting Tom Holland and Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler, you end up bringing a lot of young people to the theater, possibly for their first visit to a West End or Broadway theater, but more likely their first experience of Shakespeare, at least their first live experience of Shakespeare. And with that comes a responsibility to explain the story, to explicate it in such a way that those young audiences who are not necessarily familiar with Shakespeare will be able to access and engage with it and understand it and appreciate it and be moved by it, essentially, it's vital that they know what's going on. And though this is the very ethos of the Jamie Lloyd to strip everything back and just uplift the text as the most essential thing, I don't know if I can say with any kind of confidence that those young audience members or any audience members who weren't initially familiar with Shakespeare could follow that story because of the way that it was staged. It was so abstract. We had fight sequences with no real fighting. We had balcony scenes with no balcony. We had suicides with no action. It was very unclear what specifically was happening, whereas in Sam Gold's version, every effort was made to clarify what was happening. At the same time, the delivery of performers like Kit Connor also made that very easy. But we'll talk about performances a bit later. Another component of the Broadway production, which was very different to the West End, was its aesthetic. Here again, we had contemporary costuming, but it felt a lot more vibrant, a lot more queer, very Gen Z. Kit Connor was also in a vest. Funnily enough, that seems to just be the uniform of the romantic young man. He was in, like, a mesh vest with a jacket over the top. He changed into a sparkly outfit for the party sequence, during which we were introduced to one of this production's most distinctive and unique creative features, which was a handful of original songs composed by Jack Antonoff, a significant name within the music industry. Antonov had created a handful of songs for this production, mostly sung by Rachel Zegler as Juliet. Rachel Zegler, of course, has a fantastic voice, making it all the more conspicuous that she was doing a play and not a Broadway musical. But these moments allowed her to really shine. Aside from the first one, a song that she sang as if doing karaoke at the Capulet Ball, a moment that first captures the attention of Romeo, because she's there singing like a little pop princess. They didn't really do much to add to the narrative. They just sort of riffed on the themes that were happening at any given moment. Now, the set was constructed of a circular stage area which initially seemed bare, as well as two platforms on either side, which one of which had a bear, a giant bear. They have this teddy bear moment motif running throughout the production. People have expressed a certain amount of confusion as to what this really relates to. And I think it's the idea of centering the action in a childhood bedroom and kind of driving home the idea that these are still children. This is still a juvenile, whirlwind romance and an adolescent story as such. While Jamie Load wants to metaphorically drench the whole stage in blood, Sam Gold chooses to smother it in teddy bears. Like I said, completely different approaches here creatively. But that's not to say that this one is all hugs and kisses, because that same giant teddy bear gets his stomach ripped open with a knife so that the apothecary can give Romeo the drugs that he needs in order to kill himself at the end of the thing. I told you it was dark. I said spoiler alert already. You can't get mad at me in these comments. Anyway, I told you that stage was bare. And it initially is, but there's also a little more to it because at one point a semicircle of it lifts up and folds open to reveal a whole stage. Stage filled with flowers. The moment that this happens and the moment that it then closes again is fascinating because it seems to represent possibility and joy and love. It is synonymous with Romeo and Juliet's discovery of each other and they're falling in love and then the loss of that hope. There is also a bed set piece that is lowered down from above. This represents Juliet's bed. And this is how the balcony scene is played with Rachel Zegler on that bed, suspended higher than Kit Connor as Romeo can reach her. And this means without the actors needing to do anything. They already have all of the tools they need in order to play that separation, that desperation to be able to touch and reach each other because it's physically represented. The way they get past that is at one point, Kit Romeo runs and leaps towards the bed, grabbing it, and then is hanging from the thing, delivering his dialogue, and then does a pull up to kiss Rachel Zegler as Juliet. And everyone goes nuts. It's a very. It's a very big moment in the theater. Now the bed lowers down from the ceiling where much of the action's also played. There are these walkways above one point, Gabby beam scenes is sort of dangling over the side of one of these walkways, dispensing advice to Romeo, who is down in the playing space. When Kit is first falling in love and talking about these extraordinary feelings that he is feeling for the first time, he runs out into the audience, he runs down aisles and around the perimeter of the theater. And this again feels almost opposite to the way that the West End Romeo and Juliet was staged. Here you have a version confined to screens and showing things from outside of that playing space, but beyond the reach of the audience. The Broadway Romeo and Juliet spills out into the aud audience in a way that feels inclusive. Now, I could go through both of these productions scene by scene and tell you about the different ways in which they were realized, but it's just going to come back to the same idea, which is these two directors looking to uplift very different qualities in the material and bring different things out of them, each for their intended purpose. What I would like to focus on instead next is the performances. And it's fair to say, say, that the performances in each production exist as a result of the direction, particularly in the West End, where many of the actors here felt confined by the rigidity of the emotional scope, by the fact that they are not playing this big emotional spectrum. In true Jamie Lloyd style, everything is delivered forward, everything is a certain kind of muted. Often they're playing to camera rather than playing as broadly as they might for the stage if there weren't a high definition camera on their face. They also have microphones, allowing everything to be a lot more muted, a lot more withdrawn, a lot smaller. And the effectiveness of this varied from actor to actor. Freema Aduman, who was playing the nurse in the West End production, probably mastered the best the ability to still find charm and warmth and a little bit of wry comedy, despite being more muted. Michael Baligan really captured the ability to deliver intensity and sinister vibes. And Francesca Amoeda Rivers fared considerably better delivering hushed dialogue than Tom Holland, who, I don't know, was able to really articulate himself emotionally as well as he might have wanted to, while whispering his sound like this sort of a forced, strained whisper, while she seemed more naturally comfortable speaking at that volume. What's interesting is Gabby Bean's performance over on Broadway, not dissimilar stylistically to some of the choices that Jamie Lloyd seemed to be going for. And if anything, she's probably the one performer who could have done either of these productions with a pretty similar performance performance. And it wouldn't have seemed too out of place except for the fact that there were a Lot of comedic choices she made over on Broadway, which is a key stylistic difference between the two. A lot more was played for comedy, is still being played for comedy, where the production continues to run in New York, and everything is more overt and more passionate and more declarative and larger and broader and more expressive and more clear. There seems to be this really dedicated push to marry the Shakespearean text to its motivation and to its intention, allowing the audience to understand what these characters mean, what they want, and where they are going with this, and what is happening on the damn stage. For Shakespearean purists, I would say neither of these productions really seem to cherish the natural poetry of Shakespeare's cadence and rhythm and iambic pentameter and all that good stuff. But the Broadway production in particular seemed to stray further from that. Seemed to really not. Not even approach the natural poetry of the thing. And I don't know if that's just American accents doing Shakespeare, but it felt like there were other aspects of the material more readily accessible to those performers, like its comedy, like its passion. To speak briefly about the production stars Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor. She seemed to come alive the most on stage when she was singing, which is why I think we would really love to see her do musical theater. Kit Connor is the true star of this production. His delivery of Shakespeare is beautiful and breathtaking. I don't know if it's just because he has a British accent and it sounds that little bit more natural, but there's something more than that as well. It's his ability to really clarify intentions through that, you know exactly where he is, what he wants, what he is crying about, what he is in despair about throughout this production. And he has a real tangible star quality in this production, familiar of many actors. Think young Jude law, young Leonardo DiCaprio. That's what Kit Connor is giving now. In reviving Shakespeare, many directors choose to condense some of the roles into smaller casts. And that has happened in different ways in each of these productions. One interesting choice is the condensing of the parents, the Capulets and the Montagues. Many productions do this, and both productions, Russians, chose to turn Lord and Lady Capulet into a single performer. But over on the West End, this was all absorbed into Lord Capulet, with no acknowledgment of the fact that some of this used to be Lady Capulet's dialogue. It was all reframed and reworked to be Lord Capulet. Only over on Broadway, the same one performer played Lord and Lady Capulet, but played them as separate characters, characterizing them in slightly different ways, which was very interesting, which was a source of comedy and which made for a really, really a fascinating performance over on the Montague side. Meanwhile, it's a completely different story because we had a single Montague parent in the West End played by one performer, and in the Broadway production, no Montagues whatsoever, only Romeo without parents. This is why I said like it felt like this production really captured the intensity and the tension in the feud between the two households, and this one forgot about it because we didn't even have the Montagues represented. How could we feel this animosity between their parents who don't want them to be together when Romeo's parents aren't even represented in this production? It gave the whole thing this juvenile, adolescent, dreamy quality where he's not even thinking about his parents and neither are we. The Broadway production featured more of the named characters from the text than the West End, like Balthazar and Gregory, but it also made further fascinating choices in terms of combining different roles for the same performer, one example being Tibalt, also being played by the same performer as the nurse. The actor was Tommy Dorfman, who I thought gave a wonderful performance. And it, you know, introduced some very interesting ideas around the kinship between those two two characters and their alignment in the story. Like I said, Gabby Beans also played Mercutio and the Friar, and both productions featured Paris, although neither of them seemed to really deliver Paris as much of an essential component to the story. I'd say more so on Broadway. He truly felt like a pointless afterthought in the West End production. But in each instance, I think it's fair to say that the potency of that character wasn't fully realized. Those, of course, are just my thoughts. However, let's compare how each of these productions was reviewed. So going first to the West End production, I gave this a two star review. I called it disappointing. I think I said something along the lines of this being a play about enormous passion, and if you remove the passion, it just becomes a bland PSA about double suicides. You can go and watch my full review video or listen to it on podcast platforms if you want to hear all of my thoughts. But not everyone agreed with me. The Telegraph gave this five stars. They said, tom Holland mesmerizes in this once in a generation production. The streetwise star crossed lovers hold us in their spell, stamp the play with a 2024 freshness and earn their Shakespearean spurs. They called Holland beefy of Bicep but pale, achingly tender, at times teary and then cheery, all hormonal vulnerability. They also said that Francesca Amuida Rivers was a huge find, by turns understated, coy, comically offhand and defiantly passionate. It together they help subvert expectations that because this is about young doomed love, the evening must be giddy and hectic. Which is probably exactly how you could characterize the Broadway production as giddy and hectic. But in a way I enjoy very much, this is a brilliant example of just completely different tastes. The Daily Mail, not quite as enthusiastic, gave it a four star review, called it daringly dirgeful and said it's a typical example of Jamie Lloyd's celebrity minimalism. It's monotone, monochrome and mannered. If you took the production's pulse, you might be tempted to call a priest. Sometimes it even feels as if Lloyd is deliberately trying to throttle the life out of the febrile passion that normally drives this headlong love story. They said Francesca has a quiet maturity that sits easily with the poetry. Also at four stars was the Evening Standard. They said Tom Holland is amazing in this buzzy Shakespeare reinvention. They called him a complex, muscular Romeo and Jamie Lloyd's latest, stripped back, massively buzzworthy reinvention of a classic. The production is characteristically stark and bracing. The action is sliced, diced and intersp into a brisk two hours laced with occasional anachronisms, blinding lights and jagged bursts of industrial music. Further four star reviews in what's on stage, in the observer and in Timeout, but the Times gave it a three. Here's what they had to say. There were whoops for Spider Man's sensitive Romeo in a stripped back show at the Duke of York's Theatre that at times felt too formulaic. Given how much Lloyd enjoys using digital technology, Holland's admirers may wonder why they spend a fair amount of the evening watching their idol on a screen. He certainly doesn't disgrace himself. This Romeo is quiet, fresh faced and sensitive. What we get here is auteur theater in which the actors are reduced to chess pieces to be nudged here and there by an invisible hand. The critic Clive Davis goes on to suggest that perhaps the audience were more perplexed than gripped. Dominic Maxwell concurs. With a three star rating in the Sunday Times, he said the Spider man star cuts a dash, but Francesca Amoueda Rivers is superb. He suggests that all this subdued intimacy boxes him into one style and Juliet almost always nicks the play. It's a richer role, which is to take nothing away from the ease and variety casually worn grace of Amawuda Rivers. She's superb. The Guardian was also a three star. It said the chemistry is most definitely there, even if it feels deliberately restrained in Jamie Lloyd's turbo stylized production, which comes with all his theatrical signature marks. Alluring visuals, dark glamour and a ton of atmosphere. But it seems at times like a deconstructed Romeo and Juliet, refusing to give in to the ardor of the text and sometimes caging it in the stage. Similarly at three stars said the intention behind the concept is sometimes unclear and while at its best it heightens the rush of hormonal emotion that drives the drama elsewhere, it has a distancing effect, jolting us out of the narrative and leaving us puzzled as to what exactly this most ingenious of theatre makers is up to. The Independent wasn't quite as sure with a two star review. That said, Tom Holland star crossed sad boy lover falls flat. This stripped back production needs more passion and energy to make it stand out. This is less Jamie Lloyd does Shakespeare, more Jamie Lloyd does Jamie Lloyd Romeo and Juliet muttered through head mics housed in a shell of industrial chic. It's only when we get to the balcony scene that it properly comes alive. I didn't even think it came alive then, but Tim Bano seems to think so. It's pure, intense passion. Holland and Amalia Rivers stand face to face, hips brushing, lips almost touching, and murmur their love to each other. What this and the previous review agree on, however, is that it's never boring. The Daily Express liked it half as much with a one star rating. They said Jamie Lloyd's new production with Tom Holland is absolute drivel. Spider man star Tom Holland stumbles in Jamie Lloyd's predictably over stylized attempt at Shakespeare's tragedy. The woman next to me slept through act two. I mean, just looking at this production, it's an interesting roundup of reviews to see that there were such different takes on this. The intelligence and animation that went into his similarly radical versions of Cyrano and Sunset Boulevard are entirely absent here. As Romeo, Tom Holland is a charisma free zone, achieving the unlikely feat of being both buff and wheaty. While this may be the right combination for Peter Parker Spider man, it leaves Romeo dangling as a background character. And then finally, Variety, which does not issue star rating ratings, said the Tom Holland led production is hobbled by director Jamie Lloyd's extreme stylization and I want to read you this whole paragraph. The relationship is captivating, the energy flowing effortlessly between the means you instantly feel their connection, their shared affection, their give and take. It's by far the strongest relationship in the production. The only difficulty is that it's the one between Francesca Amouda Rivers, Juliet and Freema Adjumen's outstanding Nurse. And in Jamie Lloyd's production of Romeo and Juliet, starring the headline grabbing Tom Holland Holland, that's quite a problem. Newcomers are likely to be baffled by all but the barest bones of the story. That was David Benedict for Variety. So some very different takes about that production, but also agreeing on certain elements of it as well. Let's go now then to some of the reviews for the Broadway production. It was not unanimously praised either. In fact, Jesse Green gave it a mixed review for the New York Times. Times, he said, after an energetic pre show filled with flirting, peacocking and snits of aggression, the story begins with that casual greeting from Gabby Beans, the play's chorus. He said Connor needs no help in keeping and maintaining the emotional temperature, easily enlarging the tenderness and obliviousness of his nick on Heartstopper to fit the stage. When he looks into Juliet's eyes, you see what he wants and how seriously he wants it. When he walks among his riotous peers as they hump teddy bears and sniff out insults, you see how little that means to him. Now, now. But a manly Romeo and a tiny Juliet creates or reinforces a problem. It's disturbing enough in the Shakespeare when Lady Capulet tells her 13 year old daughter that ladies of esteem her age are already made mothers with an actor who, despite his baby face, looks much older than his years. Kit Connor is 20, Rachel Zegler is 23. You're left in an indeterminate space between ancient and current levels of ick, and Rachel Zegler, perhaps like Juliet, gets shortchanged in the process. She is immensely appealing as a bubbly ingenue with an easy, brilliant good girl smile and the crafty intelligence of a captive sees a key but as with her, Maria Zegler does not quite stick the landing. She remains relatively clear headed as Juliet is transformed by society's rules into a woman who, seeing only one way to exert her power, uses it. The tragedy here is not tragic enough. Gold staging is perhaps the busiest and funniest I've seen a lot of the humor coming from the dotty nurse who Shakespeare designed for that purpose. What the production emphasizes, instead of violence, which is broadly mimed and deliberately mild, is unfairness, as teenagers tend to do as well, wanting limits to excuse their whining. The play is thus less terrifying than teenifying. Hence the plus sign instead of the and in the title. I smiled a lot but never came close to crying. Variety did not like this production either. It said it's possible that it takes real genius to pull off the death scene in Romeo and Juliet. The audience has to believe that these are not just two children caught up in the early days of first love, but that they're fated by the gods and the universe to have met and to have died. What we have here instead is a fun night out and a hanging over. Johnny Oleksinski also did not like it for the New York Post, he said, once the audience has become accustomed to the playful, cool mood that extends into the chic lobby, they await the tragedy to unfold on that end. Romeo and Juliet is a letdown. During the dark final moments in the crypt, or whatever the heck they are, the play peters out. The best bits are specs in the rear view, the sadness less powerful than the booming tunes from two hours earlier. Sarah Holdren thought similarly for Vulture. She wrote, at the center of the whole trendy clubby stuffed animals and inflatable furniture jumble is, as Cordelia once said to her dad, nothing one could be forgiven for walking away from this show's two and a half hours traffic, thinking that maybe Romeo and Juliet is kind of mid after all, such as the innovating effect of so aggressively clickbaity and uncurious a production. But that was not the unanimous decision reached by New York's critics. In Entertainment Weekly, Emlyn Travis wrote, it's abundantly clear that Shakespeare purists expecting this production to be a timeless tale filled with medieval garb and banquets will find themselves up in arms over Romeo and Juliet's bold choices is but the visceral, teary eyed reactions that several young audience members in the crowd had during the play is proof enough of how influential it will be for a brand new generation of theater goers. Greg Evans in Deadline said, this Romeo and Juliet is full of youthful energy and what's more, contemporary youthful energy. He talks about Kit Connor doing the pull up to the balcony. He said it's a charming touch and RJ is full of them. In the Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney wrote, Gold's revival fully commits to its concept and sustains it surprisingly well. Traditionalists might shudder at the way some of the verses discuss delivered, but if you're willing to take it on its own terms, this RJ is an infectious emotional roller coaster and a hot shirtless apothecary is something you don't find at CVS put that on the receipt. The Wall Street Journal also said, while this isn't the most subtle or emotionally resonant Romeo and Juliet, it is unquestionably bringing enthusiastic younger audiences to the theater in itself a worthy and impressive achievement. Which brings us to the end of this comparison. Two completely different productions, one of which ran a limited run in London earlier this year, the other of which continues at the Circle in the Square on Broadway Way. The next topic of conversation in comparing them might be about the awards they went on to receive, except for the fact that this hasn't happened yet for either production. In fact, we will find out more about that next year and I would be very intrigued to see not only how these both do the Oliviers and the Tony Awards respectively, but also how they fare in other awards which are voted for by fans. Not only do we have hugely popular performers at the heart of these, but we also have many young audience members having seen these shows. For that that reason, will Tom Holland's performance in Jamie Lloyd's production be remembered? In a year full of many star led plays in the West End? Will this Broadway productions attempts to cater to a younger audience pay off in fan voted awards? We will find out next year and I will of course be bringing my Olivier's and Tony Awards coverage right here to YouTube. So make sure you're subscribed with the notifications turned on. I hope you have enjoyed this video talking through both of these productions again. Let me know your thoughts about them in the comments down below. If you had the chance to see either or both. And stay tuned for more theatre themed content coming very soon to my theatre themed YouTube channel. If there's a particular video you would like to see, let me know in the comments section as well. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a Stagey day. For ten more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.