Romeo and Juliet, the new show of the European Theatre Company, created in 2008 by the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, with director Alexander Zeldin and dramaturg Hussein Omar, becomes a multiethnic and multilanguage tragedy, pervaded by the conflicts between fathers and sons, Europeans and immigrants. The young English director succeeds in giving us a realistic portrait of contemporary europe, and at the same time involves in his metaphor a cast made up of North-african and Middle-eastern actors, Italian immigrants of first and second generation.
After his early work with the company created with Hussein Omar and involving the creation and tour of Calderon's Constant Prince in Egypt and the UK and then being one of the youngest directors to make his debut at the Saint Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre, British director Alexander Zeldin will stage William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a Napoli Teatro Festival Italia and Teatro Mercadante production, in cooperation with the Young Vic
Theatre for this edition of the Teatro Festival Italia. The project is that of the European Theatre Company which the Festival has promoted and produced since 2008: it puts the direction in the hands of a different director every year and selects all the artists through public auditions. During the current year, the company – not a rep company but a project company – will be made up of actors from several European countries but also from North Africa and the Middle East, first and second generation immigrants. The show is designed by George Tsypin and lit by Jean Kalman with music by Kieron Maguire and costumes by Daniela Salernitano and the associate director and voice coach is Barbara Houseman.
How did the project come about?
Alexander Zeldin: In some ways the seed of this project was laid many years ago when Hussein and I were working in Egypt with local artists and a young multi-national company on the staging of the Constant Prince. That play also discusses conflicts between fathers and sons, between an old world and a new emerging one and the idea that each new generation undergoes a painful birth process in which it separates itself from old ideas, or repeats the mistakes of the past by retreating into them and interpreting them anew, more aggressively.
I think it is fair to say that our generation, regardless of its origins, has grown up in the shadow of September 11, and the fear mongering of the Bush years. Romeo and Juliet is a play about youth caught up in the problems of the past, of the parents and the authorities and wanting to invent the world anew on their terms. The power of first love is anarchic, revolutionary. It is that moment in which humans are most powerful because they are blind to consequences, oblivious to death, and Shakespeare’s text is all about blindness, light and finding light in darkness which can mean sex, love, knowledge, death. We wanted to set about making this a real tragedy, that is one with high stakes and real engagement with contemporary reality as well as having the directness and theatricality of the experiences we had first been moved by such as the folk theatre in backstreet rooms in Cairo, exorcisms, trances...
How will you succeed in this?
Hussein Omar: For me the play is crucially about misunderstanding. In so many productions Romeo and Juliet are depicted as hopeless romantics who choose to die for their love, as though there is something inherently suicidal in their constitutions. However, in my readings of similar stories in various traditions, including the Arabic Majnun Layla, I noticed that the death of the lovers, was born out of circumstance and not choice. The foundation of Shakespeare's play is the concept of near-misses born out of misunderstanding. The lovers did not have to die – they only did so because their world failed and refused to hear them. This I think is the overriding metaphor of the play. Misunderstanding breeds extremity, a wonderful and moving metaphor for the radicalisation of Muslim youth in Europe.
The play is also about conflicting notions of authority. The prince represents the authority of the state, one that fails to understand the complex authorities embedded within the immigrants' culture, as symbolised by the feud. He hopes to control the immigrant families, through threats without providing them with the opportunities fully to participate in the culture into which they were born and which they call home. The children are caught in the middle of this; they are neither accepted by their parents, nor are they accepted by their host countries in Europe. This is the tragedy facing so many and what is at the root of much anger and violence commited
in todays world.
Alexander Zeldin: The children don't need to die and the fact that they do makes this all the more tragic. We decided to set the play in an immigrant Arab community living in modern day Europe where Romeo and Juliet are young children born in Europe, that is to say, second generation immigrants. These children are growing up in a society where misunderstandings, prejudice and social isolation are the fire stokers of that most important tragic ingredient – extreme feeling. Extreme love, extreme hatred. Being given the opportunity to create the European Theatre Company is also an opportunity to tell new stories with old ones, stories that talk about today. I was struck by something Jacques Audiard said, that making cinema involves a moral duty to be anchored in reality as well as entertaining and being poetic because you are showing life and you shouldn't mislead. The theatre is not different. This is the story of two kids that commit suicide because our world is a world in which that happens. It is not a happy story with violins and a pinning death. It is a cruel story of youth and truth chocked to death by experience and cynicism. It should be like watching a bird on a wire fluttering to death in the air as it has no perch.
THE SHOW IS ALSO PART OF THE PROJECT LE CITTÀ DEL MEDITERRANEO (MEDITERRANEAN CITIES), MADE POSSIBLE THANKS TO THE SUPPORT OF MINISTERO DELLO SVILUPPO ECONOMICO (MINISTRY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT), REGIONE CAMPANIA, REGIONE SICILIA
press review
Romeo and Juliet
WORLD PREMIERE / 2010 June 4, 5, 6, 8 / Teatro Mercadante / time 8 pm (June 5 time 10 pm) / approx. length 2 h
European Theatre Company
by William Shakespeare / directed by Alexander Zeldin / also part of the project Le Città del Mediterraneo made possible thanks to the support of MISE Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico, Regione Campania, Regione Sicilia / production Napoli Teatro Festival Italia / in co-production with Teatro Stabile di Napoli / in collaboration with Young Vic Theatre / with the support of National Theatre Studio / country Great Britain, Italy / language Arab, Italian
Romeo and Juliet (5:34)
programme notes
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