Recently, I attended an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet developed by Corcadorca –a Cork based theatre group- in the Cork Opera House. The Set designed by Roma Patel was innovative and pioneered a new way of visualising the constraints of the play. Numerous doorways led to dozens of possibilities, other realms of a hidden Verona lay beyond. The use of space and height played a key role in the setup of authority figures and of course, the most famous balcony scene between the “pair of star-cross’d lovers”. A tree placed to the side of the stage was beautifully represented as a metaphor, its leaves of written letters falling from the branches throughout the show. The final scene saw the audience showered with paper – falling pages, leaves dropping and the two lovers’ wishes scattered in the wind. Yet, I digress into hopeless romanticism.
What I really want to write about is what this adaptation of the play brought to my own mind, in particular, the costume design. As is common in the numerous representations of this play that I have seen throughout the years the distinction between both families; Montague and Capulet, is created by the use of clothing. The Montague men were mainly dressed in floral Hawaiian shirts whereas, the Capulets wore braces. This Hawaiian theme straight away reminded me of Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet distributed by Fox. I realised that the versions I had seen upon both stage and screen were similar. Both had been modernised, but more interestingly is how Luhrmann Americanised his own Romeo and Juliet.
“The idea… in the whole film was to find modern day images and equivalents that could decode the language of Shakespeare.”- Baz Luhrmann.
Any first time viewer of Luhrmann’s film will often spot the association with American culture of the time. Opening with a television set and ending with one straight away signals that this is not your average re-enactment. The use of media helps relate the tale better to the public. The scenery and background landscapes create an atmosphere that would not be unheard of in Los Angeles. Although some filming took place in Miami, most of the movie was shot in Mexico and most of the set was made from scratch. This brings up an important point that the set was made look American, something the Zeitgeist of the time could relate to. The setting of the story straight away modernises the tale. America was a leading force to be reckoned with during the nineties, it held a strong influence over the rest of the world both culturally and politically.
Speaking of culture, Luhrmann portrays a great flare for grounding his storyline in this period with music. The film plays host to some of the most popular bands of the nineties. The Cardigans and Garbage are just two of the bands that pop up during the film, adding a dark and grungy or longing and love-struck vibe to the picture depending on the scenes. The most obvious tool used to update this tale is of course the use of guns instead of swords. This is an altogether more refreshing take on the illustration of violence in the play. The use of Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech in the film to reference drug taking was not only a risk to take but also, a very significant tool used to ground the story in a modern era.
“I often get people saying, ‘Oh you know, he’s desecrated Shakespeare – the way he’s put pop music in there’ and I mean one of the things about Shakespeare was that he totally stole popular culture or anything on the streets… but particularly he took popular music and just put it in his shows because that was a way of engaging his audience into the story telling. Every choice we’ve made in terms of cinematic devices has been grounded in some reality of the Elizabethan stage. That has been really our motive on everything we’ve done here.” – Baz Luhrmann.
Of course the film itself propelled its two leads into Hollywood stardom. Having been relatively under the radar beforehand, both Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes have been immortalised as Romeo and Juliet.
Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet was ground breaking, if another more modern version were to be made it could plausibly be seen as a copy. His avant-garde approach in retelling the classic love story was unique, not only in the nineties, but also today. A modernised but also Americanised version brought both Romeo and Juliet to the forefronts of the viewing publics’ mind. As a friend joked to me recently; “Of course you could update the movie by adding a few I-phones here and there, but why would you bother?” I think it is too soon to try at making Romeo and Juliet yet again more modern. We see the film going back to its original roots in the upcoming version February 2013. It will certainly be yet another version of this story to look forward to seeing however, I only hope that where dozens have failed, it succeeds in making the movie memorable. For “never was a story of more woe” than a badly adapted version “of Juliet and her Romeo”.
Works Cited:
Ed. Brennan, Patrick. Romeo and Juliet. Dublin: Folens, 1992. Print.
http:// http://www.bazthegreatsite.com /romeojulietdvdcomm.htm
http:// shakespeare.mit.edu /romeo_juliet/romeo_juliet.5.3.html
http:// http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=bUIElvJRyNU
All images taken from Google Image.
Americanization 