Broadway's Romeo And Juliet

Shakespeare wrote the characters of Romeo and Juliet as young teenagers. How else do you explain all that hormonal acting-out – the gang fighting and running away from home? Juliet is 13, Romeo a little older. But surely not as old as Orlando Bloom, 36, when he made his Broadway debut in the role last year? Maybe you don’t notice it in the cheap seats, but in this filmed version, up close, there is something massively unconvincing about a man pushing 40 mooning about like a kid. Bloom arrives on stage riding a vintage motorbike and wearing ripped jeans and cherry red Doc Martens. Here, the Montagues are played by white actors and the arch-enemies, the Capulets, by black actors. The acting is perfectly adequate. What’s missing is that touching, slightly wince inducing me-and-you-against-the-word feeling of first love written in to the original.