A rose by another name
Juliet & Romeo – Passion… or obsession?
“Moments of real drama and of beautiful music… Both deliver Bellini’s music as if born to sing early nineteenth-century opera.” – Plays to See
Marginalia irreverently combines Shakespeare’s timeless words with Bellini’s intoxicating melodies in a newly devised and fully staged production for two singers and an actor, bringing you star-crossed lovers as never before.
Romeo and Love have been a pretty dysfunctional team for a long time. Rosaline… that didn’t go so well. Maybe Juliet will finally be the one, if Love can exercise some self-control and rein in her penchant for chaos. But desire and egotism are dangerous bedfellows: Juliet struggles desperately amid powerful currents of coercion and manipulation. A noble passion to heal age-old rifts? Perhaps not.
Love – Rebecca Hare
Juliet – Anna-Luise Wagner
Romeo – Chloë Allison
Director – Eleanor Burke
Creator – Chloë Allison
Pianist – Aya Robertson/Luke Fitzgerald
© Tristan Selden
The show is performed in English and Italian, with English translations, and runs for 70 minutes.
© Tristan Selden
Created and performed by graduates and fellows of Mountview, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Royal Academy of Music, and University of Cambridge.
© Tristan Selden
Marginalia offers workshops for pupils taking Music, English or Drama at GCSE or A-Level. We use pupils’ existing knowledge of the story as a starting point and challenge them to think about theatre, opera, and performance in new ways.
© Tristan Selden
Check our calendar for future performance dates.
Press
“The pandemic has had many dreadful effects but there have been some unexpected glimmers of light. Young performers – starved of opportunities to perform in traditional venues – have begun to devise innovative shows, performed in unusual spaces. This production by a new group, Marginalia, fuses extracts from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. It is an admirable attempt to re-imagine the famous love story and to create something new by bringing together words and music from different source material. (…) there are moments of real drama and of beautiful music. To offer a framework into which the two styles of story-telling can fit, ‘creator’ Chloë Allison has introduced a character called “Love”, played here by Rebecca Hare. Part Friar Lawrence and part baroque opera convention, this role uses Shakespeare’s words to frame the Bellini arias and sets the dramatic scene for the audience.
(…) an ideal environment for the strength of the piece which is the voices of Chloë Allison and Anna-Luise Wagner, who both deliver Bellini’s music as if born to sing early nineteenth-century opera. Soprano Wagner boasts a delicacy of tone matched with real dramatic heft when needed. The cadenza at the end of a beautifully-sung ‘Oh! Quante volte’ was exquisite. Allison, a sulky yobbo Romeo with little time for “Love”, was equally convincing. With a powerful mezzo voice and an arresting stage presence, she gave Romeo the teenage swagger that the role cries out for. ‘Tu sola, o mia Giuletta’ was a standout passage, angry and heart-broken by turns. Pianist Luke Fitzgerald gave both the singers plenty of sensitive support.”
— Owen Davies, Plays to See
“Eighty minutes of well thought through and engaging dramatic narrative and musical excellence that captivated students and audience alike”
— Richard Saxel, Director of Music at Cranleigh School, Surrey
