Note: Text has been edited for clarity and will not match video exactly.
Audible: How familiar were you with the story of Romeo and Juliet before this production?
Richard Armitage: I feel that my contact with Romeo and Juliet has been really prolific throughout my life, without my necessarily knowing it. I saw the musical West Side Storywhen I was really little, and I hadn’t quite figured out that it was taking the essence of Romeo and Juliet and putting it into that magnificent musical.
I’m a big classical music fan, so I was very aware of the Prokofiev score and the Tchaikovsky score, two ballet scores of Romeo and Juliet. I’ve seen productions of it in dance. When I got to drama school, we studied Shakespeare and, of course, Romeo and Juliet came through.
A: marks the second time you’ve performed a Shakespearean novelization by David Hewson, the first being Hamlet. What makes these projects so compelling?
RA: What David Hewson did with the script was so exciting to me. I really loved the fact that he followed avenues that Shakespeare suggested but didn’t necessarily go down. I love that he will take the essence of Shakespeare’s words and create modern dialogue.
The thing that I found most stimulating about removing the bonds of Shakespeare’s poetry is that it brings the story into a very contemporary setting, even though it’s still set in 1499. I feel like the modern reader can listen to these characters, and listen to this story, understand Juliet’s perspective, understand Romeo’s perspective, and understand the perspective of a family who are really at odds with each other.
A: It’s hard to believe we’re talking about spoilers within the context of Romeo and Juliet, but — without giving anything major away — what new wrinkles to the story surprised you?
RA: One of the things that really surprised me — and I actually had to go to Shakespeare’s play just to check that it wasn’t something I’d missed — was the fact that David Hewson had made the two families wine growers with rival grapes on the vine. The fact that their family feud was based on the popularity of their product and trade, which I felt was, in a way, insignificant and trivial, but at the same time very important to those families because it really defines their status in society and the survival of their line.
