[Ola Ince] keeps a firm grasp on the verse so that it is not drowned out. The play is tightened to under two hours – and all the more gripping for it.
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Too often, Romeo and Juliet feels like a ritual, or a formal dance. Here it feels like a proper love story and a proper tragedy. With its excesses and indulgences curbed it could be even better.
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But messaging is the order of the day in Ince’s vision, which has flashes of worthwhile invention but also an interpretative lens rendered smeary by its earnest gloss.
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...the Globe’s new production of a time-honoured tragedy that here has been so textually butchered that it often feels as if you’re getting the outtakes of Shakespeare’s play rather than the work itself.
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Together, though, these star-cross’d lovers look as if they have never got past the point of asking each other what box sets they are into. The balcony scene barely registers. They don’t connect.
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The tone sometimes feels heavy-handed and didactic but, at other times, Ince’s approach explodes the play in a necessary way.
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Ola Ince’s abrasively modern interpretation, complete with guns and overtones of street gang culture, is a strange mix.
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Ince adds touches of visceral, unpleasant gore – Mercutio whines as he dies, his youthfulness is displayed in startling horror. This a tragedy of society, rather than one of a stricken pair of lovers.
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