How Romeo + Juli­et mas­tered the Shake­speare adaptation

With the Globe The­atre recent­ly reject­ing artis­tic direc­tor Emma Rice’s bound­ary-push­ing vision in favour of a more ​‘authen­tic’ Shake­speare­an expe­ri­ence, it feels a good time to be bask­ing in the 20th anniver­sary of Romeo + Juli­et, arguably the most exper­i­men­tal Shake­speare adap­ta­tion of all time.

Before Baz Luhrmann blew our minds with his incen­di­ary take on the star-crossed lovers back in 1996, the tem­plate for Shake­speare adap­ta­tions was fair­ly unin­spired. Most, like Fran­co Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juli­et or Ken­neth Branagh’s Hen­ry V, stayed true to the peri­od, with a pro­duc­tion and set design that could best be described as authen­tic. Orson Welles’ 1952 ver­sion of ​‘Oth­el­lo’ was so faith­ful to Shakespeare’s orig­i­nal stag­ing that he even played the lead role him­self, rather than cast a black actor. It’s safe to say that Romeo + Juli­et offered a much-need­ed change of pace.

It begins with a psy­che­del­ic crash zoom into the face of a pseu­do-Christ the Redeemer stat­ue, plant­ed between two sky­scrap­ers in the fic­tion­al LA-esque city of Verona. An oper­at­ic cho­rus ris­es above the chaos as scenes of police bru­tal­i­ty and riots flash­es across the screen. It’s a vision nev­er before seen in Shake­speare and one of the most thrilling open­ing sequences of all-time.

It may seem unfaith­ful to the orig­i­nal text, but Luhrmann actu­al­ly updates the play with some clever touch­es. The famous pro­logue is now read by a news anchor and the fre­net­ic mon­tage that accom­pa­nies it resem­bles a trail­er more than any­thing else, sure­ly the per­fect mod­ern equiv­a­lent to a the­atri­cal pro­logue. One of Luhrmann’s slyest moves is intro­duc­ing his key cast with freeze-frames and titles, wel­com­ing a younger audi­ence via soap opera stylings. It may feel alien­at­ing for view­ers more famil­iar with tra­di­tion­al Shake­speare, but say what you like about it, it’s word-per­fect to the orig­i­nal text.

Luhrmann takes the same ethos into his open­ing scene, updat­ing a pet­ty alter­ca­tion about ​“bit­ing your thumb” at some­one into a full-on turf war shoot out at a petrol sta­tion. He may not be bound by a stage, but Luhrmann’s style is still very much the­atri­cal. The per­for­mances are brash and ener­getic; the ide­al con­text with­in which to place the duelling dynas­ties of Mon­tague and Capulet. Bor­row­ing cues from the spaghet­ti west­ern genre, Luhrmann speeds up and slows down the action to squeeze every drop of ten­sion from the scene. He uses every piece of cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage in his vocab­u­lary; to do oth­er­wise would be cut­ting off his nose to spite his face. Shake­speare may have been born a few hun­dred years too ear­ly for whip pans, but you can bet he’d be using every trick in the book if he were alive in 1996.

Shake­speare­an the­atre may seem quaint to mod­ern audi­ences, but in his day the Bard was a pio­neer of an excit­ing new artis­tic medi­um. It was only three years after Shakespeare’s birth that the first per­ma­nent Eng­lish the­atre, the Red Lion, opened in 1567. At that point, the­atre was the pin­na­cle of pop­ulist enter­tain­ment, typ­i­cal­ly per­formed in inn court­yards, and Shake­speare was at the cut­ting-edge of his craft. In that con­text, it seems only right to approach adapt­ing his work with a mod­ern mindset.

Luhrmann cast his film with the same atti­tude, end­ing up with a group of young actors who wouldn’t look out of place in a teen dra­ma. In the leads there’s Leonar­do DiCaprio, only 22 at the time but with an Oscar nom­i­na­tion already under his belt, and Clare Danes, best known at the time for her role in the TV show My So-Called Life. And though he only fea­tures in the minor role of Paris, the pres­ence of Paul Rudd points to Romeo + Juli­et​’s teen credentials.

The block­ing of key moments bor­rows the visu­al short­hand of the teen dra­ma genre, too. The famous bal­cony scene is trans­posed to the pool­side bal­cony of the Capulet man­sion, a loca­tion straight out of the 90210 play­book. Far from cheap­en­ing the val­ue of Shakespeare’s famous play, these changes shape it per­fect­ly for the young audi­ences it most deeply res­onates with. Full of lit­er­ary bril­liance it may be, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that ​‘Romeo and Juli­et’ is above all a tale of two hope­less­ly devot­ed kids who fall in love.

More to the point, who’s to say dra­mat­ic genius and a teen audi­ence are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive? By tak­ing the play’s themes at face val­ue, and giv­ing Shakespeare’s words the respect they deserve, Luhrmann gave him­self the free­dom to rad­i­cal­ly rein­vent the orig­i­nal text. The result is a mod­ern mas­ter­piece that embod­ies Shakespeare’s vision for the play more ful­ly than any oth­er adap­ta­tion before or since.