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The Saigon Times

Saigon Times Group is a leading Vietnamese media organization with prestigious business and consumer publications. After three decades of development, we have built a good reputation through our publications on economy, business and markets for Vietnamese and foreign readers.

Basic

Free

  • Free access to daily domestic news, podcasts and videos

Premium

$5 $1 /month
(VND 23,900)
Monthly Annual

  • Unlimited access to domestic news, podcasts, videos and magazine articles on current social / economic / trade / investment issues, commodity / financial/securities markets, M&A activity, FDI, local and foreign business communities and more.

AUTOMATIC RENEWAL REMINDER

  • Your payment method will then be automatically charged ₫ 899.000 every 365 days thereafter.
  • Your subscription will continue until you cancel.
  • You can cancel by using My account. Under My account, select "Unsubscribe" and then follow the instructions to cancel.
  • You can notify us of your intent to cancel at any time during your billing period. Cancellations take effect at the end of your current billing period.
28.9 C
Ho Chi Minh City
Saturday, July 12, 2025

Tepid Romeo and Juliet just passes muster

By Bradley Winterton

Must read

HCMC – The touring Romeo and Juliet at the Saigon Conservatory (an ADG Europe production) had costumes but a bare stage. The balcony scene had Juliet standing behind a cloth, for example, leading to the observation that plaintive scenes tended to succeed while comic ones had their work cut out.

Romeo and Juliet, after all, is a tragedy in that the two lovers both die, but it is not tragic in its general atmosphere.

There was Elizabethan-style music, much use of masks, and a fair amount of dancing. Death was an ever-present if silent figure. I have to say, though, that I could not catch all the words despite sitting in the very front row.

Mercutio is a gift to any actor, and Adrian de Costa certainly seized all the opportunities presented to him. His long Queen Mab speech, a Shakespearean masterpiece, was mostly cut, however, as being too abstruse for a bi-lingual audience. His death (“a plague on both your houses”) was effective, as was that of Tybalt.

Nina Schlautmann was a persuasive Juliet, while Leo Benedict as Romeo if anything held the whole production together. Rian Wunderlin certainly looked the part as Friar Lawrence, while the Nurse looked rather young for the role. Glyn Connop as Capulet was always a strong presence.

Romeo and Juliet was probably Shakespeare’s greatest play of his early period, but this pared-down production gave only a generalized impression of this. Anyone who remembers Baz Luhrmann’s superb 1996 film will have no need to regret missing this version.

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