‘Tut, I have lost myself. I am not here.’: Rethinking Romeo in Ola Ince’s Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe
By: Benjamin Broadribb
Tags: Shakespeares Globe, Romeo And Juliet, Shakespeare, Pop Culture, Theatre

‘Tut, I have lost myself. I am not here.’: Rethinking Romeo in Ola Ince’s Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe Benjamin Broadribb Follow Sep 2 · 9 min read

If you were to take a straw poll of Shakespeare aficionados, asking them to name Shakespeare’s whiniest and most self-entitled protagonist men, Romeo Montague would most probably end up sitting a couple of rungs below Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (who would, almost without question, come in at number one). You don’t have to look far to find this unfavourable perception of Romeo permeating his recent popular culture afterlives. The first episode of Ben Elton’s BBC sitcom Upstart Crow (2016-), for example, features a subplot in which Shakespeare (David Mitchell) looks for inspiration for Romeo’s character as he attempts to finish writing Romeo and Juliet, which arrives in the shape of Robert Greene’s (Mark Heap) insufferable nephew Florian (Kieran Hodgson).

Shakespeare’s description of Florian as a ‘lovelorn loon’ — and his servant Bottom’s (Rob Rouse) somewhat blunter choice of ‘total wankington’ — simply but effectively sum up Romeo’s default position in the twenty-first century. Upstart Crow’s comical adaptation echoes Romeo’s characterisation in David West Read’s West End musical & Juliet. As Gemma has previously noted:

This Romeo is, to quote Anne, ‘a douche’ written in Will’s image, ‘both alike in dignity’. As Romeo admits, he’s little more than a ‘sexy young man with a tight body’ and is a bit of a player with seemingly everybody in Verona (male or female) having been romantically involved with him at some point.

Any director tackling Romeo and Juliet therefore has two main options when bringing Romeo to life: either embrace the perceived whiny self-entitlement that comes with the character’s status in contemporary pop culture; or choose to push against it and do something different.

Much like London theatres gave us a ‘summer of Dream’ in 2019, with three different productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream playing at the same time, 2021 has seen a raft of Romeo and Juliets emerge from the UK capital as theatres have reopened, many of which are delayed productions intended for 2020. Simon Godwin cast rising stars Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley in the title roles for his film adaptation for the National Theatre and Sky Arts, released in April this year — a Romeo and Juliet that drifts between theatrical and filmic language and blends realism with fantasy. Reviews characterised O’Connor as ‘awkwardly posh [and] slightly repressed’,¹ and ‘[having] the same lopsided smile he wore in [Netflix series] The Crown, but here it looks like a heart melting’² — never Upstart Crow’s insufferable ‘lovelorn loon’, but not a million miles away from that either. I admittedly haven’t seen (at time of writing) Kimberley Sykes’s Romeo and Juliet for Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, but critical reaction to her Romeo, played by Joel MacCormack, suggested he sat even more comfortably within the pop culture tropes: described both as an ‘adorkable Romeo’,³ and as ‘mop[ing] and moan[ing], constantly on the edge of heartbreak’,⁴ MacCormack’s interpretation may not be all that far removed from & Juliet’s caricatured ‘douche’.

Alfred Enoch as Romeo in Ola Ince’s 2021 production of Romeo & Juliet for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (Production photo: Marc Brenner)

In contrast, Ola Ince’s Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre worked to reclaim Romeo from the pop culture tropes that currently surround him. Ince’s cast consistently shone in a trimmed-down adaptation that came in around ten minutes under the promised ‘two hours traffic of our stage’ (Prologue.12). It’s the nature of Ince’s cuts to Shakespeare’s play — both what’s removed, and what’s kept in — which laid the groundwork for her Romeo (Alfred Enoch) to escape the whiny self-entitlement into which other productions have leaned. We were still introduced to the character following the opening brawl — here a blend of reported action by fourth-wall-breaking cast members and genuine stage combat, an approach not dissimilar to the neorealist leanings of Godwin’s film which opened with a rehearsal room scuffle that segued into the world of the production. However, as Enoch’s Romeo spoke to Benvolio (Zoe West), he was never the self-absorbed writer of bad poetry seen in the play. ‘Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love’ (1.1.173) became light-hearted mockery of his elders; the cutting of the subsequent oxymoronic lines, moving straight to ‘Dost thou not laugh?’ (1.1.181), allowed Enoch’s naturally (and perhaps surprisingly) likeable Romeo to be established from the outset.

Cutting lines such as this allowed other lines usually less noticeable to take on greater significance, especially when performed under the ever-present caption screen that hung above Shakespeare’s Globe’s stage throughout Romeo & Juliet. The second half of Act 1 Scene 1 was accompanied by the statistic: ‘About 20% of all young people experience depression before they reach adulthood’ — which seemingly applied to Romeo himself. Lines such as ‘Tut, I have lost myself. I am not here. / This is not Romeo, he’s some otherwhere.’ (1.1.195–6) stood out more than they might in another production, and certainly took on greater resonance for me. Instead of exaggerating his lovesick condition, the lines became a sincere expression of Romeo’s mental state, hinting at a loss of identity and self-worth. Enoch’s Romeo wasn’t a self-pitying attention-seeker; instead, he was crying out for help. His white t-shirt emblazoned in red with the platitudinous phrase ‘good vibes only’ was symptomatic of the Verona of Ince’s production — a place where cries such as Romeo’s not only go unheard, but are actively encouraged to be bottled up.

Alfred Enoch as Romeo in Ola Ince’s 2021 production of Romeo & Juliet for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (Production photo: Marc Brenner)

Shakespeare’s text supported Ince in carrying this characterisation of Romeo all the way through her production. In scene after scene, Romeo’s identity was questioned, chipped away and belittled. After Mercutio (Adam Gillen) traded sexualised banter with Romeo upon his return the morning after Ince’s notably raucous Capulet ball, his sportive lines — ‘Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo, now art thou what thou art’ (2.4.85–87) — resonated anew. Often played as a throwaway compliment, here the lines stood out as a moment where both Romeo’s identity crisis and fragile mental condition were undermined: an unhelpful and insensitive comment akin to the modern-day advice to ‘snap out of it’. Rather than helping to return Romeo’s sense of identity, Mercutio’s words further robbed this from him, suggesting that he was only his true self — and only worth being around — when he was being ‘sociable’ rather than ‘groaning’.

As in the play, Romeo’s renewed character in this scene came from his encounter with Juliet (Rebekah Murrell) in Act 2 Scene 2, but this too played off Romeo’s sense of self being knocked down rather than built up. COVID-19 restrictions made for a production in which characters necessarily kept each other at a distance, adding to Ince’s choice to make her Romeo & Juliet notably unromantic — a version of the play in which the young lovers barely touch. As such, the sense of Juliet’s words as a declaration of unconditional love during the balcony scene was considerably diminished; instead, her questioning of Romeo’s identity felt far more prominent. In the play, Juliet’s first full speech of the scene — spoken as a soliloquy, before she knows Romeo is there — is ostensibly about Romeo’s status as a Montague. However, Juliet says the word Romeo six times in these sixteen lines — she says ‘Montague’ just twice. So, does she want Romeo to not be called Montague, or not be himself, in order to allow herself to love him? In Ince’s production, Juliet questioning ‘wherefore art thou Romeo?’ (2.2.33) and her insistence that Romeo’s ‘name […] is no part of thee’ (2.2.48) added to the sense of a Verona in which Romeo was never supported — or allowed — to simply be who he naturally is.

As Romeo visited Friar Laurence (Sargon Yelda) following the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt (Will Edgerton), a caption told us that ‘75% of children with mental health problems are not receiving treatment’ — another statistic apparently tied to Romeo, as Gillen and Edgerton chased Enoch around the stage, then slumped against each pillar of the stage to haunt the scene as apparent figments of his unstable mind. Both the Nurse’s (Sirine Saba) belittlement of Romeo — ‘Stand up, stand up, stand up an you be a man’ (3.3.88) — and the Friar’s similar comments — ‘Art thou a man? […] / Thy tears are womanish, […] / Unseemly woman in a seeming man’ (3.3.108–9, 111) — were delivered as heartless rebukes akin to ‘man up’ and ‘boys don’t cry’. The scene was uncomfortable to watch, Ince powerfully demonstrating the harm of the pejorative gendered insults of Friar Laurence and the Nurse, laying waste to Romeo’s fragile state of mind and sense of self.

Alfred Enoch as Romeo, Sargon Yelda as Friar Laurence and Rebekah Murrell as Juliet in Ola Ince’s 2021 production of Romeo & Juliet for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (Production photo: Marc Brenner)

Ince’s production ended in the young lovers’ deaths notably not together, but isolated. Romeo’s didn’t die ‘with a kiss’ (5.3.120) lying alongside Juliet as the character so often does, but sprawled downstage some distance from Juliet’s tomb, positioned in the centre. In a (sort of) return to the production’s metatheatrical opening moments, Ince chose to have the cast seated around the stage when not participating in a scene during the final act. There was once again a potential parallel with Godwin’s film, in which Buckley’s Juliet takes the Friar’s sleeping draught watched by characters seated around her bed, figures conjured by her frantic mind. It’s possible to read the final act of Ince’s Romeo & Juliet in a similar way — are we seeing the conclusion of the story through Romeo’s fog of depression, figures from his life seated around the stage haunting him in the way Mercutio and Tybalt had earlier? (Tied into this interpretation is the fact that Murrell was the only cast member not seated on stage, Juliet only appearing when Romeo arrived at her tomb.) Whether imagined by Romeo or not, the presence of the cast on stage as first Romeo and then Juliet died suggested inaction by the people surrounding these teenagers — undeniably there, but doing nothing as they witnessed the couple spiral further into shared depression. They watched as Romeo returned from Mantua; they watched as he poisoned himself, groaned, threw up, convulsed; and they watched as Juliet discovered his body, broke down, put a gun in her mouth, pulled the trigger. The failure of Friar Lawrence’s letter to reach Romeo paled in significance to the society which sat, watched and did nothing as a young man and woman took their lives.

By eschewing the caricatured qualities associated with Romeo in particular, Ince and Enoch created a sincerely tragic Romeo for 2021: one whose mental and emotional wellness is repeatedly neglected by those around him, and whose sense of identity is continually eroded until there is nothing left. As a result, far from the heightened tragic romance traditionally associated with Shakespeare’s play, Ince’s Romeo & Juliet uncomfortably, unapologetically, framed the death of both teenagers as a messy waste of young life.