BACKSTAGE: R&J

Producers Fed Albrahamse and Marcel Meyer talk about a fresh spin on Shakespeare

Tell us about Shakespeare's R&J

Joe Calarco's award-winning adaptation of Romeo and Julietre-imagines Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers as two adolescent schoolboys in a Catholic boarding school during the 1950s. Their love for one another becomes the ultimate forbidden love in an austere, repressive all-male milieu.

Four pupils discover an illicit copy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and start acting it out in their dormitory late one night. Perceptions are turned upside down as the fun of play-acting turns serious and the words and meanings begin to hit home and universal truths emerge.

What inspired you to produce this play?

[Abrahamse Meyer Productions] is constantly on the lookout for ways to highlight the magic of Shakespeare's original texts and bring these powerful plays alive hundreds of years after they were written. Calarco's adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is one such text. It is an exciting, new way into this heart-rending story that reframes this beautiful old masterpiece in a "post-modern" frame.

How has the all-male cast been accommodated?

Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed by all-male casts and Calarco's genius is the creation of a 20th-century context and setting in which it is feasible for an all-male cast to perform this play.

Setting it in a Catholic boarding school in the 1950s brilliantly highlights the most important theme in the play: the possibility and ability of love to defy the restrictions placed on us by society. The notion of two Catholic schoolboys in the 1950s falling in love is as taboo a concept within that milieu as it is for Romeo and Juliet to fall in love when their two families, and indeed the whole city of Verona, are torn apart by a devastating and bloody feud.

As Romeo says to Juliet in the famous balcony scene: "What love can do that dares love attempt" - the play becomes a celebration of two brave young lovers who risk everything to consummate their love. The tragedy is that Romeo and Juliet's "first time" is also their last.

What issues does the play raise?

Romeo and Juliet deals poignantly with the theme of intolerance. Sadly, there is still so much intolerance in our society. It is because of intolerance and hatred that we allow xenophobia, homophobia and racism to prevail.

In many ways Shakespeare is trying to show us that, if we love more, the world can be a better place. If Romeo and Juliet were allowed to love, the prime of Verona's youth would not be dead at the end of the play.

What has been the most challenging part of the reverse casting of female roles?

Actually, the most challenging, and exciting, aspect of this production is doing a play that is usually performed by at least 20 actors with only four.

The challenge is not to compromise the integrity of Shakespeare's phenomenal play and the excitement comes from the innovation and virtuoso performance style required by this staging.

The play is provocative. How have South African audiences responded to it?

R&J has been a huge success across the world, and the response to the play in South Africa has been overwhelmingly positive.

• 'Shakespeare's R&J' is on at the Wits Main Theatre from September 21 to 30. Performances start at 7pm. Parental guidance for children younger than 12 is advised