Romeo & Juliet Reviews Round-up – starring Tom Holland

"Tom Holland mesmerises in this once-in-a generation production"

"The street-wise, star-cross’d lovers hold us in their spell, stamp the play with a 2024 freshness and earn their Shakespearean spurs"

"To cut to the chase – something this ruthlessly edited version does with provocative, scholar-baiting verve – Holland’s rite of passage in Shakespeare’s swooniest tragedy doesn’t disappoint. In fact it ravishes, though it may startle fans with its line of attack."

"Amewudah-Rivers, 26, is a huge find, by turns understated, coy, comically off-hand, and defiantly passionate. But eyes rivet, inevitably, to Holland – beefy of bicep, but pale, achingly tender, at times teary and then cheery, all hormonal vulnerability. Together, they help subvert expectations that because this is about young, doomed love, the evening must be giddy and hectic."

"No, Lloyd – who is generally of the “less is more” school – doesn’t just strip things back scenery and props-wise, removing tangible weaponry, but slows things down, placing the lyrical language centre-stage."

"The West End hasn’t ever really seen an R&J like it, which was surely the point."

"This Romeo may be monochrome and mannered... but grab the chance to see Spider-Man do The Bard at all costs"

"... Jamie Lloyd’s daringly dirgeful production"

"Yes, this new production of Romeo & Juliet is a typical example of Lloyd celebrity minimalism – following in the footsteps of James McAvoy in Cyrano and Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard. As usual, that means a run on mics in the capital for a production that is whispered – and sometimes merely breathed – into the amplification system."

"It’s monotone, monochrome and mannered. If you took the production’s pulse, you might be tempted to call a priest. Sometimes, it even feels as if Lloyd is deliberately trying to throttle the life out of the febrile passion that normally drives this headlong love story"

"After meeting Juliet he [Romeo/Tom Holland] does a jig like a footballer celebrating a goal, but otherwise moves with the precision of a cat. And although it’s stillness he does best, the shy smiles he scatters on his beloved are – in Hollywood terms – worth a million dollars. In the circumstances, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers holds up well as Juliet. Lloyd discourages her from showing too much personality or independent spirit (as he does everyone), yet she has a quiet maturity that sits easily with the poetry."

"But we may not get a chance to see Holland live on stage again if Hollywood has its way – so happy are they who have a ticket already for this curious but nearly sold-out requiem."

"Tom Holland is amazing in this buzzy Shakespeare reinvention"

"Tom Holland makes an amazing return to live theatre as a complex, muscular Romeo in Jamie Lloyd’s latest stripped-back, massively buzzworthy reinvention of a classic. Holland is matched by Francesca Amewudah-Rivers as a fiercely still and sardonic Juliet."

"Lloyd’s production is characteristically stark and bracing. The action is sliced, diced and interspliced into a brisk two hours, laced with occasional anachronisms, blinding lights and jagged bursts of industrial music."

"Mostly they use their own accents, with London demotic as the default rather than received pronunciation, and they rarely raise their voices above a murmur. This is more effective at accessing the characters’ inner lives than the whisper-amplifying headphones used in David Tennant’s recent Macbeth, and it lends the action a ritual quality."

"Jamie Lloyd’s youthfully intense staging gives us a Juliet for the ages"

"She [Francesca Amewudah-Rivers] is one of the best Juliets I have seen. And what a production of Romeo & Juliet from shake-them-by-the-scruff-of-their-neck Lloyd, constantly turning expectations inside out. It is a marvellously young cast"

"Fights are blacked out (Jon Clark’s lighting is low, dusky) so that there is nothing between the flashpoint and the result: blood-drenched vests and an inert figure. There is no declamation, much intimate whispering (everyone is miked), yet never silence: sound design wizards Ben and Max Ringham send a drone, a note of constant low-level anxiety, throughout the action, sometimes quickening the alarm with a drumbeat."

"No one is posh. Holland (who was Billy Elliot long before he was Spider-Man) is light but concentrated, not soggy with romanticism but slipping easily in and out of tears. Amewudah-Rivers is radiant, spirited"

"As in his production of Sunset Boulevard, Lloyd tracks the action with cameras, following characters on and offstage. Not always profitably. There is a magical cutaway to Holland on the theatre rooftop, in front of a neon sign spelling Mantua, but some closeups detract from the intimacy of real people talking in the dark. Yet Romeo and Juliet are undiminished: not “cut … out in little stars” but gleaming as big ones."

"Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers shine in stripped-back Shakespeare"

"It’s to director Jamie Lloyd’s immense credit that in the midst of all the madness he has produced a production of Romeo and Juliet of clarity, calm and insight."

"The actors, in hoodies and Ts, speak and whisper into microphones (sound design by Ben and Max Ringham) and often look out into the auditorium rather than at each other. It’s a groove Lloyd has used to a greater or lesser degree in recent productions of The Seagull, Cyrano and Lucy Prebble’s The Effect, making each seem new to new audiences. What is so impressive about the style is that rather than getting in the way, it strips things back to its essentials. In Romeo, you may lose the parties and the fights and a sense of a vibrant society in which the lovers are isolated at the core of their warring families, but for all the cuts, you keep the poetry."

"In the second act, some of the tension and the authority flags. The camerawork becomes over-intrusive and even this propulsive production can’t quite disguise how much plot Shakespeare suddenly has to cram in. But the freshness of the approach turns the downbeat ending, when the two lovers once more sit side by side, consumed not by love or lust but by a terrible sense of doom, into an anthem for all wasted life."

"Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers acquit themselves nicely in Jamie Lloyd’s brilliantly unsettling take on Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy"

"I think Jamie Lloyd’s production of Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’ is about death. Taking place in a gloomy void, Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’s titular lovers speak in halting, hushed voices, and the action jumps and skips like a half-remembered dream, as if they were looking back on all this from a great distance."

"It is an undeniably oppressive, disorientating way to stage the play. But after a period of adjustment I really liked its haunting stream of consciousness flow. Whether or not Lloyd has literally made it about ghosts, he cuts out the teen drama, false hope, could-have-turned-out-differently stuff. As old Capulet (later cribbed by Lana del Rey) says, ‘we were born to die’. That’s the sum of it: this is a show about dead people."

"The tension here is that much as Lloyd’s vision is the show’s dominant feature, Holland is one of the most famous people in the entire world. Who knows what an audience more here for him than Lloyd or Shakespeare will make of it all"

"For Lloyd, ‘Romeo & Juliet’ is another step down his increasingly auteur-ish path. Exactly what’s in it for Holland is an intriguing question"

"Tom Holland is riveting in brutal but tender production"

"Francesca Amewudah-Rivers co-stars as an honest and bold Juliet at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London"

"The first glimpse of Tom Holland’s Romeo comes not on stage but — courtesy of a live video feed — hunched in a backstage stairwell, wrapped in a dark hoodie, his back to the camera. And that sets the tone for Jamie Lloyd’s stark new treatment of Shakespeare’s tragedy, led by a deft, intelligent performance from Holland — forget Spider-Man, here he’s quiet, intense, focused — and a beautiful one from Francesca Amewudah-Rivers as a strong, determined Juliet."

"The friar’s caution to Romeo — “violent delights have violent ends” — drives the whole piece: this is a bleak, brutal, distilled version of the story. No props, no scenery"

"In this world Holland’s Romeo and Amewudah-Rivers’ Juliet look isolated — little wonder that they cleave together. Holland’s riveting Romeo is wan, pinched, lost in thought when we meet him"

"Lloyd telescopes the action so that scenes are overlaid or compressed down to just the dialogue: this is Shakespeare’s tragedy condensed to the elements, the language to the fore. It’s an approach that brings both gains and losses"

"Tom Holland convinces in virtual Verona"

"There were whoops for Spider-Man’s sensitive Romeo in a stripped-back show at the Duke of York’s Theatre that at times felt too formulaic"

"All credit to the Brit who plays Spider-Man on the big screen for taking on the challenge of performing modern-dress Shakespeare in the West End. But given how much Lloyd enjoys using digital technology, Holland’s admirers may wonder why they spend a fair amount of the evening watching their idol on a screen."

"He certainly doesn’t disgrace himself. This Romeo is quiet, fresh-faced and sensitive."

"In the end, though, the dominant figure turns out to be Lloyd himself, a director who has done so much to reinvent the classics and draw a new, younger audience into the stalls. What we get here is auteur theatre in which the actors are reduced to chess pieces to be nudged here and there by an invisible hand."

"Michael Balogun’s Friar, who declaims the prologue, adds much-needed warmth. Freema Agyeman’s Nurse is a spitfire."

"Apart from the odd whoop when Holland made an entrance, the audience at the preview I attended was on its best behaviour. Perhaps, like me, they were more perplexed than gripped."

"Tom Holland’s Romeo is outshone by Juliet"

"The Spider-Man star cuts a dash but Francesca Amewudah-Rivers is superb."

"He’s a film star, so maybe it makes sense that Tom Holland makes his big entrance for Romeo & Juliet on a big screen... It is, in its artful mixture of mystique and big sell, pure showbiz."

"There are points in this new one in which Lloyd’s boldly pared-back modernism is starting to feel like a stylistic tic as much as a liberating aesthetic, but it certainly keeps moving. Holland — sinewy, tearful, close-cropped like a young Bear Grylls — talks as if not wanting to be overheard by his parents. The auditorium hushes down to catch every syllable."

"... if Holland is overshadowed by the almost unknown Francesca Amewudah-Rivers as Juliet, I’d cite two reasons. First, all this subdued intimacy boxes him into one style. Second, Juliet almost always nicks this play. It’s a richer role. Which is to take nothing away from the ease and variety and casually worn grace of Amewudah-Rivers. She’s superb."

"Tom Holland enters to whoops as Francesca Amewudah-Rivers shows a steely cool"

"The Spider-Man star and his spikily charismatic Juliet, giving a heroic performance after all the abuse she faced, are perfectly cast in Jamie Lloyd’s turbo-stylised production"

"Tom Holland navigates the transition from Marvel’s Spider-Man to Shakespeare’s Romeo smoothly, his wan, sinewy lover instantly at home on stage (in spite of the distracting audience whoop when he gets there). Francesca Amewudah-Rivers brings her own spiky charisma as Juliet"

"The chemistry is most definitely there, even if it feels deliberately restrained in Jamie Lloyd’s turbo-stylised production, which comes with all his theatrical signature marks: alluring visuals, dark glamour and a tonne of atmosphere. But it seems, at times, like a deconstructed Romeo and Juliet, refusing to give in to the ardour of the text, and sometimes caging it in."

"A screen magnifies faces and moods, just as in Lloyd’s recent production of Sunset Boulevard, with roving cameras capturing black-and-white shots across the stage.... It is all very clever, but to what end? And where the screen in Sunset Boulevard seemed to gesture towards the original film, it does not have a meaningful underpinning here."

"Running alongside these frustrations though, there is clear virtuoso brilliance. Every actor excels at verse speaking, some delivering their lines in MLE."

"The production excels in its presentation of gang culture too, full of contained alarm and menace. There is a fantastic, industrial look to Soutra Gilmour’s set"

"Compelling"

"Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers are tremulously intense lovers in Jamie Lloyd’s stark, dark take on Shakespeare’s tragedy"

"We expect the unexpected from a Jamie Lloyd production, and true to form, the director’s take on Shakespeare’s tragedy of doomed teenage love disrupts and repossesses the familiar story. Some of the techniques that Lloyd employed in his recent, stunning staging of Sunset Boulevard are here: there’s a starry lead performance, in this case from Spider-Man’s Tom Holland as Romeo; a dark, stark aesthetic; and extensive use of live video footage, some of it shot offstage. This time, though, the intention behind the concept is sometimes unclear, and while at its best it heightens the rush of hormonal emotion that drives the drama, elsewhere it has a distancing effect, jolting us out of the narrative and leaving us puzzled as to what exactly this most ingenious of theatremakers is up to. Still – and this is a fundamental on which far too many Shakespearean productions fall down – it’s certainly never boring."

"Tom Holland fans may regret forking out £275"

"Francesca Amewudah-Rivers is a radiant Juliet, but the strange speaking style and lack of eye contact left me feeling increasingly soporific"

"Spiderman does Shakespeare: this is the sizzling hot ticket of this year’s West End"

"This radically stripped-back production is directed by auteur-director Jamie Lloyd, who enjoyed a huge hit last year with his Nicole Scherzinger-starring Sunset Boulevard. Much of the aesthetic for that is replayed here, to markedly diminishing returns: the black costumes, bare playing space and omnipresence of onstage videographers to film the action, which is relayed on a giant screen."

"Francesca Amewudah-Rivers is a radiant Juliet with a luminous stage presence whose performance single-handedly elevates the entire show; no wonder Romeo is instantly shaken from his self-indulgent solipsism and Holland comes vividly and convincingly alive to display the rawness of fresh emotion."

"It’s a terrifically convincing portrayal of love – and lust – at first sight, a feeling that carries over into the pulsing passion of the balcony scene."

"It all goes downhill after this, and not just from a plot perspective."

"Tom Holland’s star-cross’d sad boy lover falls flat"

"Hot on the heels of his triumphant ‘Sunset Boulevard’ revival, Jamie Lloyd has recruited one of the biggest young stars in Hollywood to take on Shakespeare – but this stripped back production needs more passion and energy to make it stand out"

"Look, we all know why we’re here. It’s what Jamie Lloyd does: takes a classic play, strips away a load of stuff, and puts a massive star at the centre of it to sell all the tickets and sort of trick teenagers into watching Ibsen or Pinter or Shakespeare."

"This is less “Jamie Lloyd does Shakespeare”, more “Jamie Lloyd does Jamie Lloyd”; a Romeo & Juliet muttered through head mics, housed in a shell of industrial chic – or it was chic the first time Lloyd did it, but now it just looks like a fetish for ventilation ducts."

"The play seems fresh; there’s a real intense focus on the words. But it’s only when we get to the balcony scene (no balcony obviously) that it properly comes alive. It’s pure intense passion. Holland and Amewudah-Rivers stand face to face, hips brushing, lips almost touching, and murmur their love to each other."

"Credit to Lloyd, nothing is ever boring, which can’t be said for most Shakespeare productions. But this is Romeo & Juliet, and “not boring” isn’t enough. We need more passion, more energy"

"Jamie Lloyd's new production with Tom Holland is absolute drivel"

"Spider-Man star Tom Holland stumbles in Jamie Lloyd's predictably overstylised attempt at Shakespeare's tragedy. The woman next to me slept through Act 2."

"A voguish young movie star, onstage cameras, microphones placed conspicuously around a bare stage as well as taped to the actors’ cheeks, smoke, blinding flashes of white light, a continuous background hum as of a trapped hornet - how quickly the trademarks of a Jamie Lloyd production have become clichéd and predictable."

"Editing the text to suit his vision and cutting ‘extraneous’ characters, Lloyd has fashioned what he imagines to be an adaptation for the era. But the intelligence and imagination that went into his similarly radical versions of Cyrano and Sunset Blvd are entirely absent here."

"As Romeo, Tom Holland is a charisma free zone, achieving the unlikely feat of being both buff and weedy. While this may be the right combination for Peter Parker/Spiderman it leaves Romeo dangling as a background character."

"Tom Holland-Led Production Is Hobbled by Director Jamie Lloyd’s Extreme Stylization"

"The relationship is captivating. The energy flowing effortlessly between them means you instantly feel their connection, their shared affection, their give and take. It’s by far the strongest relationship in the production. The only difficulty is that it’s the one between Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Juliet and Freema Agyeman’s outstanding Nurse. And in Jamie Lloyd’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” starring the headline-grabbing Tom Holland (in a run that sold out in two hours), that’s quite a problem. And not the only one."

"For all the focus on these and other projections of intense close-up moments, the most attention-grabbing element is sound. Every moment is underscored by everything from sudden stings and doom-laden, intense, industrial hum, all the way to bursts of drum ’n’ bass in an attempt to add tension."

"This self-conscious banishing of traditional naturalism supposedly to focus upon the text is scarcely a new approach, but given the lack of visual clues or physical manifestation of the relationships, it’s extremely hard to follow either who’s who or the actual plot. Newcomers are likely to be baffled by all but the barest bones of the story."