SOURCE: Jackson, Russell. Review of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare Quarterly 52, no. 1 (spring 2001): 107-12.

In the following excerpt from his review of the 2000 Shakespeare season at Stratford-upon-Avon, Jackson comments on the visual austerity of Michael Boyd's staging of Romeo and Juliet, surveys Boyd's directorial innovations, and summarizes the principal performances in the production.

Michael Boyd's austere Romeo and Juliet was played on a bare platform with a runway down through the auditorium and two walls of plain wood curving into a blind exit at the back of the stage. Verona was not fair in any sense of the word. The play began with a chair hurled across the empty stage, and Sampson and Gregory entered in full flow. Nothing of the sexism and violence of the opening “comic” dialogue was spared; the fight that ensued was bloody and furious. As it reached a climax, the actors froze and a...