REVIEW
What: A Tender Thing
Where: Belfry Theatre
When: To Dec. 8
Rating: Three stars (out of five)
It’s tempting to call it a Golden Girls take on Romeo and Juliet. In A Tender Thing, Shakespeare’s famous lovers are recast as two geezers contemplating their final days. British playwright Ben Power has boldly taken the Bard's original text and rejigged it — in a cut-and-paste tour de force — so the play becomes a sombre contemplation on love, old age and mortality.
A white-haired Juliet (Clare Coulter) has become so ill and frail that she’s determined to end her life. Romeo (Peter Anderson) is both playful and bereft, alternately blowing on the dying embers of their love and struggling to come to terms with the inevitable.
The question is, does the play work?
Yes and no — at least judging by the Belfry’s new production marking A Tender Thing’s North American première. Certainly, there is much to admire in this show. Peter Hinton’s direction is sure-handed and (especially at the beginning and the very end) imaginative. Christina Poddubiuk’s expertly lighted set is jaw-droppingly beautiful: a strange, silvery room that seems to exist in a shadowy limbo. Subtle cinematic music — which includes The Flamingos’ I’ve Only Got Eyes for You and the theme from Coronation Street — cleverly propels the action and adds to the atmosphere immeasurably.
Shakespeare’s familiar lines take on new meanings in this literary mash-up. Sometimes it’s because they’ve been completely reassigned; for instance, it’s Juliet and not Mercutio who delivers the Queen Mab speech. When Juliet says “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” she’s not a love-struck teen but an old woman querulously pulling up the covers of her bed. And when she says: “I have forgot why I did call thee back,” we realize it’s doddery memory rather than youthful exuberance.
One of the most touching repurposed lines is Romeo’s: “Death lies upon her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of the field.” This encapsulates perfectly one of A Tender Thing’s prevailing themes — that older people view their loved ones as they once were as well as how they are now.
A Tender Thing begins promisingly enough. Hinton has Romeo embrace Juliet with youthful passion; he clambers over the headboard of her bed for a kiss and puckishly dives underneath. The show bristles with dynamism. Yet this irreverent energy is not sustained.
Overall, Thursday’s performance had a static quality — too often we were aware of actors reciting lines. The heart of the problem is a lack of chemistry between Coulter and Anderson. A still-smouldering love between seniors, the engine that must drive this play, seemed in scant evidence. Perhaps this will improve as the run progresses.
Anderson brings to the stage a welcome physicality that, happily, is not overdone. His Romeo is a jester — at one point Anderson did a funny, frenetic dance. Elsewhere he serenaded Juliet with blues played on a little guitar. Coulter had her moments, too — yet on this night she seemed to be still searching to inhabit her character.
Overall, Power’s experiment seems more clever than inspired. Some may find his approach infuses new life into an age-old play that — let’s face it — is as familiar as the wallpaper in one’s bedroom. Others will find it a brilliant, post-modern parlour trick. Still, I wager few will forget the set’s shimmering, ghostly brilliance or the strange, glittering beauty of A Tender Thing’s most poetic moments.