Romeo and Juliet at Wilton’s Music Hall – A Storm of Youthful Fury

Sarah
12 hours ago
3 min read

Exterior of Wilton's Music Hall with peeling paint on the doors and crumbling decorative plaster work — The beautifully faded charm of Wilton's Music Hall

★ ★ ★

I’ve long loved Wilton’s Music Hall – the kind of place where you don’t just sit down to watch a play, you sink into history. All flaking paint and twinkling fairy lights, it feels like stepping sideways in time. This time, it’s Shakespeare’s turn to haunt the rafters, in a pulsing, physical take on Romeo and Juliet from Flabbergast Theatre at Wilton's Music Hall.

Flabbergast are a proper ensemble company, and you can feel it in every breath. There’s an unspoken rhythm to their movement, a sense of shared language that only comes from working together in close creative quarters. They slide between roles with almost eerie ease, sometimes watching scenes from the sidelines as if they’re spirits bearing witness.

From the very start, the visual style is bold and stark. The cast appears clad in white undergarments, already blotched with blood, as if we’re seeing the ending before the beginning. It’s unsettling, arresting. As the play unfolds, layers are added and removed – corsets, coats, veils, skirts – but the base layer remains the same, like a reminder of fate they can’t quite wash away.

Blue lit stage with actors on different levels, two lying on the floor — Wilton's adds atmosphere to the production

The set is stripped back, made up of scaffolding towers that lend height and danger to the action. Nothing is hidden. Everything is exposed. Actors climb and swing and collapse across the metal frames with striking energy – Juliet’s “balcony” is just another level of the structure, but the tension it creates is real.

Woman sitting on a man's lap, he is sitting on the floor — Romeo and his Juliet after the wedding. Photo credit Michael Lynch

One of the standout performances comes from Kyll Thomas‑Cole who plays Romeo, he manages to be both hot-headed and tender – no small feat. His delivery feels spontaneous and lived-in, his movement unselfconscious. He has a kind of feral charm that makes the doomed romance feel urgent rather than sentimental.

There’s also real electricity between Mercutio (Simon Gleave) and Tybalt (Nadav Burstein), the kind that crackles with more than just rivalry. Their scenes together throb with heat, a kind of unspoken tension that suggests their fight is about more than honour. It’s cleverly handled, simmering just beneath the surface.

I had more mixed feelings about the Nurse (Vyte Garriga), who’s played with gusto but with Eastern European accent that, while distinctive, occasionally muddles the clarity of the lines. Some of the quicker exchanges get lost, which is a shame – though her timing is sharp enough to land laughs even when the words blur. I was also unsure about her pantomine dame style costume.

We’re also missing a sense of the older generation here. The parents and authority figures feel distant or underdeveloped, and without their looming presence, the feud that drives the play loses some of its weight. This is very much a world run by the young – which is thrilling at times, but also leaves certain emotional notes undeveloped.

A special mention has to go to the Simon Gleave who doubles as Paris. The version of Paris we get here is unsettling, to say the least – needy, cold, and rather grotesque. It’s a bold choice, and it works: It's hardly surprising that Juliet (Lennie Longworth) finds it so easy to dismiss him as a potential husband.

It’s a show full of movement – twisting, leaping, falling – and that’s where its strength lies. You might not leave with a deepened understanding of the play’s politics or poetics, but you’ll leave having felt it: the speed of a heartbeat, the sting of betrayal, the inevitability of what’s to come.

Wilton’s itself is almost another cast member. Reopened after a painstaking restoration just under a decade ago, the space still carries its history proudly. It’s not a polished venue, and this isn’t a polished show – but the combination is strangely perfect.

Three stars from me. Not flawless, but it’s fiery and imaginative, and at times it blazes. And really, what more could you want from a tragedy?

Running until 21st June