ROMEO AND JULIET

Thu 30 June - Sat 9 July 1960
In the open air in the Courtyard, Abington Park Museum, Northampton

Photo gallery

No-one would claim that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, now being presented in the Courtyard, Abington Park, by the Northampton Drama Club, is a 'natural' for the open-air stage like A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, or The Tempest.

Here is no sylvan-fairy world; no light-hearted, pastoral masquerade; no magic, spell-bound island; no songs; but a tragedy of young love, largely confined within walls, and culminating in a gloomy burial monument.

Perhaps Northampton's 'open-air theatre' itself enclosed by walls is better suited than some for a background to the play.

It is certainly not an easy work for amateurs to attempt, for the two principal roles have vexed and, often, defeated, some quite distinguished professionals.

In the courtyard, Evan Roberts (from Kettering) is a grave and thoughtful Romeo who speaks his lines with understanding, although his rash killing of Tybalt seems out of character.

Alison Dunmore is a pretty, smiling Juliet who is as her best in the last scenes when there is no matter left for smiling.

Among the rest of the cast, Pamela Pusey is a genial, teasing nurse - born and bred, one would say, in Welsh Wales - William Solley a maturely merry Mercutio, Leslie Necus a very human Friar Lawrence, and Maurice Dunmore a fussy, paunchy Capulet.

There are two more performances of the play, this evening and to-morrow evening and since, as on the first night, Romeo and Juliet's tender exchanges may be punctuated by the raucous cries of peacocks, it should be made clear that Paulina Brandt, the producer, did NOT include them in the 'noises off'.