Young actor goes to the next stage

Adam Whibley will be performing as Romeo in Unity Theatre’s upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet which opens on April 25. Picture supplied

A beautiful prostitute was the role Boys’ High student Adam Whibley took on in his first brush with Shakespeare on stage.

“That was a challenge as a Year 9 student in a boys’ high climate,” he says.

“The fewer people who remember it the better.”

Four years later, he is playing one of two leads in Unity Theatre’s upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet.

The young actor has climbed up through the ranks since his Year 9 debut in a Shakespeare Festival performance. The festival’s performance format comprises a five-minute or 15-minute excerpt from one of Shakepeare’s plays.

As a Year 10 student, Whibley took on a small part as one of the nobles who are shipwrecked by the tempest that gives the play its name. By the following year he had upgraded to another aristocratic figure — Queen Gertrude, mother of mad Hamlet; wife of Hamlet’s dad’s murderer.

Vaulting ambition

Then in last year’s festival he took on two roles. One was as Antonio, the merchant who is contractually obliged to allow a money-lender to carve a pound of flesh from him. The other was the porter scene from Macbeth, in which Whibley played the drunken porter. He also directed that excerpt and it earned him direct entry to a national festival. Last year he took on two small roles in Unity’s production of Macbeth. And now he has a title role, playing opposite Bo Jarratt (as Juliet), in the Norman Maclean-directed production of Shakespeare’s tragic romance.

The play centres on Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, the doomed “star-cross’d lovers” whose families are locked in long-standing enmity.

“I look at aspects of Romeo’s personality through his interactions with other characters,” says Whibley.

“One problem I have with Romeo is throughout the play he has a tendency to follow people.”

He is also ardent, impetuous and “does crazy things”.

The heart of the play

The famous balcony scene between Romeo and Juliet shows the depth of his passion for Juliet, says Whibley.

“Of the two, Romeo is trying to drive the interactions. It is a funny scene.

“What is important, is to retain the depth and complexity of the language but without losing sight of the fact it is conversational.”

One of Whibley’s favourite moments in the production is when Romeo runs to Friar Lawrence after killing Juliet’s short-tempered cousin, Tybault. Because of the killing, Romeo is banished from Verona.

“There is no world without Verona walls/ But purgatory, torture, hell itself,” says Romeo with characteristically adolescent hyperbole.

“Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden ax/ And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.”

For much of the play, Romeo has a subdued energy but he spits the dummy when he is told of his banishment, says Whibley.

“He throws the kitchen sink at the news, out of this horrified, hysterical energy. It’s quite a funny scene in a dark way.”

Unity Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet opens on April 25.