TNT Theatre has developed an international reputation for presenting dynamic, exciting and direct productions of Shakespeare’s major works. Live music, powerful choreography and a simple performance style allow a modern audience to experience Shakespeare’s great love story as an Elizabethan audience might have done at a London theatre some four hundred years ago. In this production the play is freed from the clichés of West Side Story and the film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and is rediscovered as a story not of urban street kids but of “two houses both alike in dignity.” This is a tragedy of clan war, of a town in violent chaos, riven by family feuds, where the deaths of two young lovers bring the warring factions to their senses. Verona is brought to the stage in all its classical glory, Latin passion and baroque decadence. This is an Italy where honour, pride and family loyalty are valued above morality, peace and love. In a modern world equally riven by violence and intolerance, where peace seems as elusive as true love, this great tragedy is as relevant as ever. This is not a historical but a mythic setting that enables the morality play and the romantic tragedy to reach its true potential.
