REVIEW: Romeo and Juliet by Creation Theatre, in partnership with Watford Palace Theatre (Online)

In 2020 Rob Myles curated the complete works of Shakespeare over several months on a weekly basis with actors around the world in their homes (The Show must go Online) and made them available for free on YouTube. It was fascinating to see how their technique evolved and improved using zoom technology over the weeks. Creation Theatre, in partnership with Watford Palace Theatre, have taken this idea a step forward (or perhaps backwards) with their innovative 'choose your own adventure' style adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet directed by Jermyn Street Theatre’s Artistic Associate Natasha Rickman. It proclaims it is “an expansive multi-platform digital production”. In practice, it is a mess and rather like having a nightmare about a drug-fuelled rave with 105 (on this occasion) voyeurs watching.

It is a game of two halves. In the first half, we join the story either as Capulets or Montagues and by the look of it the voyeurs split roughly fifty: fifty as we watch our “House” prepare for the Capulets party where Romeo meets Juliet. Throughout we can see in the zoom windows the other voyeurs, some in masks, as they too try to work out what is going on. 

REVIEW: Sleeping Beauty at the Watford Palace

Sleeping Beauty is an established pantomime title with a strong appeal to a young audience but each writer adopts a different approach to the one hundred year time travel that is central to the story so it was very interesting to see two of this year’s productions on the same day. The Watford Palace version was written by the brilliantly creative Andrew Pollard and the Alban Arena version, just 10 miles up the road by the equally reliable Paul Hendy. There could not be a more contrasting approach to the same story with Princess Aurora falling for a Prince before the evil fairy’s spell sends her into a deep sleep despite her nannie and father’s best efforts to prevent it. But there the similarities end!

At Watford the saviour is Fairy Fender, a lively personable performance from Thomas Fabian Parrish in a seventies wig and jump suit who happens to arrange time travel. We are first taken to 1957 to meet Vince Prince, an excuse for some Elvis Presley songs and impressions before going further back in time to 1539 and Aurora’s birth. By the time her eighteenth birthday arrives in 1557 the Princess, charmingly played by Nikita Johal has met both Prince (assuming he is an actual Prince) and Fender but Pestilentia Blight (as Caraboose is called) played by Arabella Rodrigo still delivers the fatal prick from within a giant 18th Birthday cake. Fender then mistakenly sends her forward 400 years with her father (Lenny VIII played by John Macneill) and her nanny (Fanny played by Richard Emerson) so the Prince can awaken her! The comedy is mainly delivered by Fanny (the Dame) and Leonie Spilsbury as Sowesta, a talking pig.

REVIEW: Jack and the Beanstalk at the Watford Palace

Andrew Pollard has established himself a very creative and innovative writer of pantomimes breathing fresh ideas in the familiar tales. Last year's Watford Palace Pantomime Aladdin was set in Norway and this year's Jack in the Beanstalk is set in Switzerland - even the flag is a big plus. This simple devise provides a springboard to reinventing the traditional story and introduce new twists and jokes. Jack(Oliver Longstaff) has arrived in the village of Tob-Le-Rone in answer to an advert from the Burgher Herr Brush (Walter Van Dyk) for a giant Sleigh driver but has misread the requirement for a Giant slayer. The Giant lives at the top of the mountain, stops it snowing and can be only reached by a cable car he controls. It provides a logic to the story and enables the Fairy (Charlotte Clitherow) to call for audience to yodel and the Burgher to warn the audience to "not blow the horn, leave the horn alone". It is a clever witty premise, however not everything that follows quite lives up to the set up.

The sets designed by Cleo Pettitt are colourful cartoons of Swiss landscape with signs to the swizz banks, a moving cable car and Swiss Chalet. The costumes are also very good especially the purpose made Dame's outfits including a cuckoo clock bra, an airplane, a Swiss Army knife and a good costume gag about painting the town red. The Beanstalk when it grows to enable Jack to bypass the Cable car is set too far upstage left to be fully visible and the Giant lair is rather simple suggesting the limits of the budgets had been reached!