Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, 0563553448, Lowest Book Price Finder

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	Romeo and Juliet: A BBC Radio 3 Full-cast Dramatisation. Starring Douglas Henshall & Cast (BBC Radio Shakespeare) Author: William Shakespeare ISBN: 0563553448 / Audio CD Publisher: BBC Audiobooks Ltd / 1999-09-06 List Price: £14.99 Similar Books More Details from Amazon.co.uk

Editorial Reviews:

This is undoubtedly the greatest love story ever written, spawning a host of imitators on stage and screen, including Leonard Bernstein's smash musical West Side Story, Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet filmed in 1968, and Baz Luhrmann's postmodern film version Romeo + Juliet. The tragic feud between "Two households, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona", the Montagues and Capulets, which ultimately kills the two young "star-crossed lovers" and their "death-marked love" creates issues which have fascinated subsequent generations. The play deals with issues of intergenerational and familial conflict, as well as the power of language and the compelling relationship between sex and death, all of which makes it an incredibly modern play. It is also an early example of Shakespeare fusing poetry with dramatic action, as he moves from Romeo's lyrical account of Juliet--"she doth teach the torches to burn bright!" to the bustle and action of a 16th-century household (the play contains more scenes of ordinary working people than any of Shakespeare's other works). It also represents an experimental attempt to fuse comedy with tragedy. Up to the third act, the play proceeds along the lines of a classic romantic comedy. The turning point comes with the death of one of Shakespeare's finest early dramatic creations--Romeo's sexually ambivalent friend Mercutio, whose "plague o' both your houses" begins the play's descent into tragedy, "For never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo". --Jerry Brotton

Customer Reviews:

Strange interpretation

It's always difficult to achieve the drama of a play through voice alone and in many ways this succeeds - although the verse reading of Juliet is very average, completely devoid of the poetry. The worst problem though is Capulet - for ages it was bugging me who this sounded like. At first I though the previous reviewer might be right and that he sounded drunk - but unfortunately then it hit me - he sounds exactly like George the hippo on Rainbow. So every time he speaks I just see a big pink hippo in my mind'e eye which is a tad distracting. The Queen Mab piece benefits from an Irish actor's accent. All in all, mixed. I would have preferred the Arkangel production, but it is not on CD which is a bore.

Far from satisfying, and rather surprising

This radio adaptation is interesting in some ways, but it remains rather short on its objective. The sound universe created behind the voices is rather diminutive. Some voices are not that very accurate : Juliet is rather old-sounding and Romeo is quite late in his twenties at least. Lord Capulet speaks as if he were plain drunk all the time. But what's more some interpretations are defective. The famous sonnet during the dance is just badly done. The tone is wrong. The wit is flattened, etc. The balcony scene is slightly better, luckily. Romeo, by the way, is too much of a hooligan, of an agressive character, not at all in keeping with the world we can vaguely hear behind. Finally there are some cuts and some changes in the text that are not at all justified, such as Â« pacing Â» for Â« passing Â». Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.

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