Marlowe Arts Showcase 2024: A ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Preview

Tirza Sey talks to the team behind an unorthodox and gritty reimagining of Shakespeare’s classic, Romeo and Juliet.

Ollie Flowers (Tybalt) and Kitty Ford (Romeo) during rehearsals - photo by Paul Ashley

The Marlowe Arts Show is back for 2024.

As one of the most anticipated productions in the Cambridge theatre calendar, it’s an opportunity for several highly talented student actors and technicians alike to collaborate with a professional creative team. This year’s production is the infamous ‘Romeo and Juliet’, directed by professional director Joshua Seymour, whose work includes: ‘The Normal Heart’, ‘Follies’ (The National Theatre), ‘The Face’ (Orange Tree Theatre) and ‘One Arm’ (Southwark Playhouse). I sat down with assistant directors, Gina Stock and Raffaella Sero, to learn a bit more about the production and its creative process.

Now, I’m sure most of us have seen at least one version of Shakespeare’s most known love story, and some may say that it’s ‘overdone’ and ‘conventional’. The team is challenged to bring a fresh approach to the staging of this play, with the risk of unoriginality looming over them. They have sought to achieve this by ‘stripping the play back to the core concepts of violence, love and family’ with a focus on the ‘real guttural instinct of man.’ Raffaella believes that bringing the play down to this ‘basic human level of emotion’, will achieve this goal. This bareness will also be emulated through the stage design – the set will mainly consist of chairs, with dirt all across the stage, and non-elaborate costuming.

‘Society is the true villain...the characters are all just trying to do their best.’

Tackling the theme of toxic masculinity, Raffaella describes the team’s emphasis on ‘what it means to be man for the characters in the play.’ Taking an unorthodox approach, they have chosen to examine this through a matriarchal lens. Gina notes how something of stark importance is the ‘erasure of Lords in both the Capulet and Monetgeau family, rendering the society as one where ‘all the authority comes from…matriarchal figures.’  This exploration of toxic masculinity, particularly through characters like Lady Capulet, should create what Gina describes as a ‘unique dynamic’.

Societal pressure seems to be another prominent lens of this production. ‘Society is the true villain...the characters are all just trying to do their best.’ For Gina, the one scene in particular that encapsulates this theme is the argument between Lady Capulet and Juliet regarding a potential marriage proposal. In their intense four week rehearsal during the winter break, the actors underwent a lot of character work to help them ‘dig into who these people really are.’  The team are transgressing the norms through characterisation too, with the typical ‘damsel in distress’ Juliet, now having ‘some real grit…knowing what she wants.’  The leaders in the play will not, in Gina’s words, be ‘fusty, old people’ but instead ‘young people who are constantly grappling to make the right decisions and find a place within the society and feud itself.’

Working alongside an accredited director is nothing short of a theatre-passionate student’s dream. As my parting question, I asked Gina and Raffaella what their main takeaways have been from this creative process. Coming from a choreography background, Gina admits that assistant directing has been quite the change. Where she’s used to ‘preparing the steps in advance and simply teaching it’, she has engaged more with the art of experimentation. ‘When working with Josh, he comes into a scene not necessarily knowing what it’s going to look like until it’s up on its feet.’ Having the guidance and time to do this has been really refreshing for Gina and it’s a technique that she’ll definitely be taking forward. 

As Raffaella’s second-time assistant directing this exact play, following her run in CAST 2023, she thought she knew this play pretty well. However, her collaboration with such a professional team has made her ‘fully realise how dramaturgically good the play really is.’ Josh has motivated her to ‘understand the text with an open-mindedness, where you are both adaptable but also scrupulous’. The aim is ‘dragging what you want out of the actors and allowing them to tell you what the story is, instead of merely instructing them what to do.’

When the curtains close, Gina and Raffealla hope the audience will be left grappling with a whole range of emotions, way beyond sadness. Will we see a production that is ‘fresh, raw and where the stakes are so high’? I have a strong feeling that we will. 

The Marlowe Arts Show production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ will be on at the Cambridge Arts Theatre from the 30th of January to the 2nd of February.