Star-crossed lovers, Romeo (Theo Dāvid) and Juliet (Phoebe McKellar) play out their story in 1960s Italy. Photo / Signy Bjorg
The power, the passion and the fashion of 60s Italy is the backdrop for a new production of Shakespeare’s most romantic play. Joanna Wane asks the cast of Romeo & Juliet to tell her a love story.
It might be one of the world’s greatest love stories, but let’s face it – Romeo and Juliet were just a couple of rebellious, hormone-addled kids who spent less than 24 hours together. They didn’t have time to get bored with each other.
Whether their doomed relationship would have survived a kinder fate has been the subject of much debate since Shakespeare wrote his famous comedy-turns-tragedy more than four centuries ago.
As far as Auckland Theatre Company director Benjamin Kilby-Henson is concerned, that misses the point.
“There’s a big nemesis in the play – and that’s time,” he says. “None of the characters has enough time; they talk about it all the way through.
“In a way, the tragic ending means that Romeo and Juliet’s love and the purity of their relationship transcends time. And so there’s a beauty in that.”
Kilby-Henson has set the tale in 1960s Italy for his reimagining of Romeo & Juliet, which opens on July 15. Inspired by Italian fashion houses Pucci and Missoni, the period costume design is gloriously florid.
“She looks just like Twiggy!” someone exclaims at the photo shoot for Phoebe McKellar – police officer Tilly from One Lane Bridge – who plays Juliet, opposite Shortland Street’s Theo Dāvid.
“It’s a beautiful window into a period we romanticise,” says Kilby-Henson. “The 60s was a decade synonymous with love.”
The script, discreetly trimmed, remains true to the original text. However, slight tweaks have been made to the story. The young lovers are in their mid-20s (Shakespeare’s Juliet is 13), Lady Capulet is the sole head of her household, and Romeo’s companions, Mercutio and Benvolio, are lovers.
“Every character in the play represents a facet of love, so having a queer element just felt like it fits in place.
“The nurse and the friar [the latter played by Miriama McDowell] represent that sort of parental love. Montague, Romeo’s father, deeply loves his son but doesn’t know how to express it.
“Lady Capulet doesn’t know how to love her daughter, either. And for her, marriage is a business transaction. She can’t understand why Juliet wouldn’t want this match with Paris.”
Kilby-Henson has his own tale of thwarted love, but with a far less tragic ending. He met Jack, the man who is now his husband, in 2019 on a Christmas trip back to his childhood home in the UK.
The following February, Jack flew to New Zealand, landing on Valentine’s Day. He barely made it back to England before Covid closed the borders. “So then we had nine months apart. But I did propose when he was here.”
On their first date, Kilby-Henson had suggested they ask each other three questions. “I can’t remember what the first question was, but the second question was, ‘Do you want to kiss me?’ We never got to the third question,” he says.
When Jack came to Auckland, Kilby-Henson took him to Mudbrick on Waiheke Island and asked Jack to marry him, with a tag on the ring box that read, “I think this is question number three”.
In keeping with the spirit of the play, we asked members of the cast to tell us a love story. It turns out they’re a bunch of romantics – all of their stories have a happy ending, too.
Nearly three years ago, my best friend asked me to be her girlfriend. Three months ago, I asked her to be my wife and she said yes.
People were so surprised because we’d been best friends for about 10 years with no romantic inkling whatsoever. For the longest time, no one believed it.
Jess and I are both vegan and one of our friends was like, “If I find out you’re lying to me and this is a big joke, you both have to eat a rotisserie chicken!”
My late grandfather and my grandmother absolutely adored each other. As a kid, you’d hear them bickering and fighting, but when I got older, I realised it was just them bantering and being playful together.
You know, the traditional Samoan stuff: “Why is the food not ready?” “Because you’re still in bed.” “I’m still in bed because the food’s not ready.” “Get out of bed!”
And they’d never, ever say sorry. They’d shout, it’d go quiet for an hour, and then he’d pop his head into the living room and say, “Darling, are you hungry?” That’s how they got on with their days.
Now his ashes sit on a table in front of my grandmother and the shackles are off. She’s got a bottle of Jack there and she’s smoking in the house, which he hated. She looks at his ashes and she’s like, “Look at me, Toetu, you can’t stop me now.”
I’m like, that’s love right there.
When I think of love, it’s the love that comes from friendship that hits me hardest. And often, as a child, the connections you have with animals are when you start understanding what love means.
My parents come from the same village in Spain. When they’d take us back to visit [from England], we’d drag mats out on to the balcony at night and lie there looking at the stars, making up stories.
A story my grandma used to tell was about a female flea who lives in a theatre. One day, an opera singer goes back to collect her scripts. She hears this beautiful singing and discovers it’s the flea.
When the opera singer’s partner dies, she loses her voice out of grief. So she puts the flea above her lip, like a beauty spot, and the flea sings the arias for her, helping her through the grief.
Victor and I met on Grindr, which sounds like a dirty sex app, especially if you’re not gay. We didn’t have a crazy, romantic meeting, so when people asked how we got together, we’d make something up.
His stories were out of the gate. He’d say I was allergic to shellfish and he had to give me the Heimlich manoeuvre at a restaurant. There was one where we jumped out of a plane.
He’d go for something crazy and heroic, but I’d try to trick people into believing my story was true. Like, I rolled my ankle and he sat with me while I waited for it to go down.
Everyone meets on apps now, but that does kind of rob you of a romantic love story. It’s been a nice way of making it more fun.
My favourite Studio Ghibli film is Howl’s Moving Castle. Sophie is an ordinary girl who gets turned into an old woman by a witch whose heart has been broken by Howl, a very handsome and charming wizard.
She goes to find Howl so he can help her break the curse and finds out he has a lot of things that are broken about him, too. They go on a journey to fight for themselves and end up fighting for each other.
What’s special about the story is that they don’t fall in love because of physical attraction, but because of each other’s hearts and souls. That taught me a lot about the world and how you can decide how you choose to see it.
My great-grandfather was a fiddle player and my great-grandmother was a dancer. They met on the dance floor at a Westport ball in 1930, and this beautiful language of enduring love has been passed down through the generations.
My granddad was a porter at Westport Hospital and my grandmother was a trainee nurse; they got set up on a blind date. My grandfather passed away last year, but this year would have been their golden wedding anniversary.
My mother and my father met at drama school in Auckland, and they are so beautifully in love to this day. It’s a choice they make to still be in love – it means choosing that person every day.
So, I have very high standards, which can make it hard sometimes. I don’t have rose-tinted glasses. I just want to meet someone who’s my equal and will keep making that choice to spend a life together.
I’ve had lots of romance in my life and I’m in a loving long-term relationship now, but in the past I’ve had massive fractures, hard relationships and pushed a lot of shit uphill.
My parents have been married for 41 years, and the strength, the time and the commitment they’ve put into it, outside of the wild frenzy and passion of love, is such an incredible totem to me. I’m still in awe of it.
A few years ago, some friends who were getting married asked me to be their celebrant so I got my licence and I’ve done about eight weddings now. I really love sitting down and talking to the couple about their story. It’s such a beautiful process. And I like the weddings that focus on the party afterwards.
My parents met at a little disco nightclub with a light-up floor out in Papakura. He was 20, very stylish, very suave, doing his 70s disco moves. She was 18, this gorgeous, petite young thing with a world in front of her.
They were just babies! But that night, she told her mum she’d just met the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with.
They taught me love is a partnership; it takes work. That’s imbued my whole life. I’ve always known my sister and I were a product of love.
Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior lifestyle writer with a special interest in social issues and the arts.