When familiarity breeds new opportunity in Shakespeare’s Romeo and juliet

Wayne Jordan has had fun with his production of Romeo and Juliet, writes Padraic Killeen

LIKE so many of William Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet is a work that transcends theatre, its tale of love across the social divide having become an iconic myth of Western culture.

It is thus a narrative with which modern audiences are very deeply familiar. According to Wayne Jordan, director of a new production at Dublin’s Gate Theatre, the audience’s familiarity provides not just a challenge but an opportunity.