Your version of Romeo & Juliet will run at around 90 minutes. How did you go about deciding which bits to cut?
It was important to establish a clear vision. Romeo and Juliet is a play about young people and we knew we wanted the spotlight on the younger characters. We also knew we wanted to explore the idea of time and the pressure on the characters to react and make quick decisions. It’s a long play with lots of characters and some of those characters don’t have a great deal of autonomy. Lady Capulet, for example, doesn’t say a great deal, so we decided to combine her and Lord Capulet’s characters to represent a single figure of authority and adult influence on Juliet. Being clear about
