Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Kildare Youth Theatre @ Crooked House

8.00pm (and also Sat 3.00pm matinee)

Preview Tues 9th. Tickets: €10 and €8.

Directed by Peter Hussey and Darren Donohue.

Designed by Ciarán Aspell.

For four nights only we presented this robust and contemporary staging of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy by the innovative and award-winning Kildare Youth Theatre @ Crooked House. This production was set in the underworld of a crime-weary city dominated by two feuding drug cartels, where restless young men are bored and always eager for a fight, and where love profits no-one, least of all the young.Shakespeare’s timeless and tragic tale of star-cross’d lovers was performed by actors who are – unusually in Irish productions of this play – the same age as their characters. Most productions are delivered by adults pretending to be teenagers. This is a fast and racy production, performed with conviction by the accomplished young actors who wowed critics in London in the summer.The play examines what happens when two teenagers break with tradition and try to love each other rather than hate each other. In the adult world where war, vengeance and violence are normal, their love is obsessive, revolutionary, fierce, and doomed.Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, written at a time when the brief vogue for courtly sonnet writing was at its height. It fitted perfectly with the general mood of those poets who were exploring and expressing the sensations of love during the early 1590’s.

Featuring Joe Byrne as Romeo, and Ali Cunningham sharing the role of Juliet with Orla Kelly.

Other principle roles were played by Catriona Curran, Neil Connolly, Ian Hollinshead, Colm Ivers, Des Phillips, Mary Duffin, Laura Mc Gann, Sarah O’ Farrell, Anna Brennan, Seán Reid, Eoin Barnes, Joseph Byrne, and Laurence Hamill.

The supporting cast are Rachel Lally, Adam Conroy, Emma Jane Dempsey, Noel Gannon, Janette Walsh, Kate O’ Meara, Declan Armstrong, Sinead Devlin, Gavin Armstrong, Karla Duffy, Sophie Longwill, Jonathan Boothe, Sophie Cadogan, Lydia Farrell, Joanne Browne, Jill O’ Donnell, Susan Tinsley, Jenni Mac Mahon, Emer Dherty, Lydia Tyrrell, Olwen Kelly, Orla Tinsley, Derek Walsh, Aimee Hanks, Kirstin Armstrong, Deirdre O’ Donnell, Gillian Harrington-Lynch, and Aoife Whelan.

The stage management team included Mary Duffin, Aoife Whelan and Ross Mac Mahon.