Romeo and Juliet – Pumphouse Theatre, 17 January 2026: Review

Romeo and Juliet
The Pumphouse, Takapuna
Tickets available HERE

Shakespeare in the Park is now in season and celebrating 30 years! This latest iteration of the world’s most famous bard is acted out within the open-air amphitheatre attached to Takapuna’s Pumphouse Theatre nestled on the banks of Lake Pupuke.

Of the two plays on offer this term, Romeo and Juliet opened on Saturday night (January 17th) to a sellout crowd of all ages.

Many raucous whoops and cheers indicated audience affiliation to the cast and fostered an atmosphere of confidence to the players as if they were a team with home advantage.

In the spirit of morale boosting support, why not? Should you know anyone who has poured their time into this work it is worth attending as a display of your community support. Not least of all, it will give you an insight into any prior absence endured during the rehearsal season and provide you an opportunity to share in some potential liberation, or at least the feeling of it, come mid-February.

Furthermore, if you are a North Shore resident, this is a band of players from within your community. The institution responsible for putting on this spectacle is Shoreside Theatre.

They promise sumptuous costumes, creative production design and passionate performances with a talented troop of local actors and attest to this production being volunteer driven.

The result is that approximately 30 members of the North Shore community, including 20 players, with director Steph Curtis at the helm, have chosen to offer this specific rendition of Shakespeare’s classic to you.

This is not just community theatre; it is community Shakespeare.

Shakespeare is challenging. Most of the population do not understand Elizabethan English despite a strange generation-spanning hype emanating from association to such broad verbal reach.

This is not association to an era, but to a bold writer from within it, who invented and popularised approximately 3,000 words whilst utilising approximately 20,000 independent lexemes.

Just as the desire to associate with being rich does not make one’s bank balance increase, the desire to associate with rich vocabulary does not produce oratorical competence.

Desire is simply not enough to deliver Shakespeare’s rich depth of linguistic nuance. The challenge for any troop of players is, as it was in its era, both an academic and dramatic discipline.

There is a great deal of discipline in the memory alone! This was a skill evidently harnessed by many of the cast; particularly Grant Zent as Romeo, who, whilst taking on the lion’s share of the dialogues and monologues remained notably sharp.

However, his potential ability has been misused by the misguided and outlandish decision to attempt to make his role predominantly that of a comic. His resultant performance is closer to that of a wet scherzando toned variation of Austin Powers than the deeply vexed, ponderous and sincere poet the words of the play indicate he is.

Juliet’s other suitor, Paris, played by Ben Martin, in another flight of fancy, has been characterised as a less determined version of the Duke of Weselton from Disney’s Frozen. It is completely inconceivable that he is a viable parental preference.

Give or take a few days, Juliet, fatally did well to avoid them both. She, played by Alice Dibble, delivered one of the few genuinely poised performances.

The early innocence, the emotional maturity, the courage, the defiance and the resolve were all present and evident, and most importantly, she brought out the meaning within Shakespeare’s lines.

Her nurse too, played by Iona Taylor, was absolutely on point. Where scenes revolved around just the two of them, the audience was witness to some subtle delivery that resonated, implied and revealed before being again plunged into comedy.

It is not that Romeo & Juliet cannot be funny. Bravado and camaraderie are often expressed traits within Shakespeare’s males, specifically when in their own company, and not absent from this work.

In the first half this was significantly leant upon through outpourings of fast paced banter, male thrusting and innuendo. The most flamboyant male entertainer was Leyla Whiteside reprising the role of Mercutio.

Her brash and playful gestures, indicative of coarse male jest, were coupled with lavish buxom female costumes whilst being addressed as a gentlewoman.

This was clearly a deliberate script-adapted choice – an experiment to reverse the Shakespearean practice/necessity to have males playing females that will sit as a type of gender dysphoria in some viewers.

By the interval, it became clear what characterisations we were to expect and how we should interpret them in the second half where the characters had not died at the hands of some of the well blocked swordplay.

The blocking was expansive with virtually every entrance and exit utilised – in front, behind, above, beside and even above stage right from both ladder and tree. Most seemed to add to the fun and slightly wild approach of the production, though more perspicuity would have offered a sincerity that was largely absent on all fronts.

As the inescapable plot of the play takes on dark, poignant and layered messages, it becomes increasingly difficult to uphold the desire to make this work comedic.

However, this was clearly the intention the reasonably young troop had been tasked with, and in their defence the approach was present from the outset as the cast filtered into the audience to speak randomly with them whilst in character.

Many at this moment hoped that they were not approached or made eye contact with, and whilst some might have wanted to engage with a little banter, it would prove vanity to hope that this moment would not catalyse the tone of the entire play.

As the season progresses, incremental changes will doubtlessly occur in vocal lilt, tonal variation and dramatic pausing as the discipline of continuous engagement with the dialogue facilitates greater material understanding.

After all, it is a 430-year-old play that needs cogitation, but importantly it still remains an extremely effective tool for the development of its players.

Presently, however, too many lines were rattled through with irregular pausing and coupled to body language and intonation intended to catalyse humour, which it did, though holding no necessary connection to the script.

The result of this Romeo and Juliet is a fun superficial sacrifice of meaning.

Giles Wynn

Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing
The Pumphouse, Takapuna
Paying through until 14 February 2026.
Tickets available HERE