William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet

Baz Luhrmann, 1996.

Year Nine English. Romeo and Juliet. Imagine you’re fourteen, at an all-boy’s school (for the time being), and hormones are flying everywhichway, when along comes this play about love and all its heady adrenaline-thumping rushing glory. It’s got everything for nearly-fifteen year olds – swordfights, love and exile, (with only the slight hiccup of a death (or two or four) to dampen the mood). Enter, then, Baz Luhrmann’s hyperactive reimagining. In Luhrmann’s film, moreso than the play (at least on the page), you get sucked into its heady world, it catches you up in its frenetic exuberance and brashness, and disgorges you at the end, exhausted and exhilarated. For many years afterwards, I couldn’t listen to Radiohead without thinking of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hawaiian shirt or Clare Danes’ angel wings. Despite all its detractors, it’s not a bad place to start watching Shakespeare on film, nor is a bad film by itself. If anything, it’s quite good, even if it is its own cliché (the play as much as the film). But I spose when you’re almost fifteen, you don’t really care.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Opera Australia, 2010

Photo by Jeff Busby for Opera Australia.

Benjamin Britten’s gorgeous orchestrations, shuffled-around scenes, and sung Shakespeare might sound a bit of an unlikely combination, but when set upon Catherine Martin’s sumptuous turn-of-the-century Indian Raj set, it seems as though it was always meant to be. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, there were brilliant colours – reds, pinks, yellows, blues, oranges, lush greens – enough richly coloured silks, embroidered fabrics, sun-blasted linen and British pomp to set the scene perfectly, and more than enough magic to swoon over. Without his dazzling cinematic tricks, Luhrmann’s direction (here rehearsed by Julie Edmunson and choreographer Belynda Buck) is clear, theatrical, and perfectly attuned to both his aesthetic vision and the demands of the piece, and I am certain this is one of the best ‘Dreams’ I have ever seen.