Romeo & Juliet (National Theatre film, 2021)
Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley, filmed in the backstage spaces of the National Theatre.
Strip away the period and the spectacle, keep the actors and the words, and the play still works in a building with no audience in it.
You want the play acted rather than decorated, and you have an hour and a half.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the text, spoken by a strong theatre cast.
Changes: the setting, to the backstage areas of the National Theatre itself, and the length, to an hour and a half.
Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley, with Fisayo Akinade as Mercutio, Deborah Findlay as the Nurse and Lucian Msamati as Friar Laurence, filmed in the backstage spaces of the National Theatre.
Whose story is it?
the lovers’, played by two actors close enough to the camera that you watch them think.
How much time does it ask?
1 hour 36 minutes.
National Theatre at Home: Josh O’Connor, Jessie Buckley, Fisayo Akinade, Deborah Findlay, Tamsin Greig, Adrian Lester, Lucian Msamati.
Where to find it
Other ways to get it: Rent or subscribe — National Theatre at Home
More ways into Verona: Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor, 1936) · Romeo and Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli, 1968) · William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)