By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

WHEN?: Monday 20 May, opens and runs through 3 August 2024 RUNTIME: 140 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

Outside it’s 1 of the hottest days of the year and inside this historic venue the most remarkable thing about this very Jamie Lloyd production of the Shakespeare classic is the absolute inferno of chemistry between its 2 leads.

• Read on for reasons including how this Romeo and Juliet is very Jamie Lloyd and how Holland is well cast

Fans of Lloyd’s recent 7 Olivier Awards-winning Sunset Boulevard, which was a short stroll away at the Savoy Theatre, will find much that made that show so memorable is repeated again here.

However, we have no problem with the casting of Holland as Romeo and his return to the West End 14 years after playing the lead in Billy Elliot the musical at London’s Victoria Palace Theatre and then enjoying a movie career in which he has played Spider-Man in 6 films.

His Romeo arrives wearing a hoodie and, like many of the cast, has a microphone taped to their cheek so we can hear them better as they whisper their intentions to each other occasionally even using an additional mike on a stand to get their point across.

But it is Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Juliet that is the revelation here – she’s sassy, feisty and full of street talk signalling that her Romeo might be film star buff and look hench in a white vest but he’s not going to get everything his own way.

This is the story of ‘star-crossed lovers’ who discover they are from rival family houses and Freema Agyeman (Apologia, Trafalgar Studios) brings a fussy chattiness to her Nurse as she acts as a go-between for our besotted couple.

Nima Taleghani (TV’s Heartstopper) brings a streetwise quality to Romeo’s wingman Benvolio as blackouts and near silence punctuated by discordant industrial sounds ratchet up the tension and threat of violence.

monsta winner Michael Balogun (Death Of England: Delroy, National Theatre) as a kindly Friar does all he can to offer the threatened lovers an opportunity to be together as blood stains the white vests of the cast’s angry young men including Romeo.

Mobile camera operators follow cast members backstage through this venue as they did so very memorably in Sunset Boulevard and the screens here are used to more dramatic effect with gigantic letters signalling a change in day and also the interval.

We even join Romeo out on the roof of the theatre as he contemplates his exile and foreshadows his doomed return to the side of Juliet.

This is a stripped-back production of arguably Shakespeare’s most beloved tragedy in which a well-cast Holland brings a seriousness to his role that makes it all to easy to understand why he would fall for a vivacious Juliet given life by a quite brilliant Francesca Amewudah-Rivers.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Marc Brenner and  ATG Tickets
• Have you seen a Tom Holland show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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