My Shakespeare

Episode
Romeo and Juliet
Broadcast Info
2014 (44 mins)
Description
The star of Shakespeare in Love examines Royal Ballet productions, musicals such as West Side Story, and Baz Luhrmann’s extraordinary cinematic re-imagination of Romeo & Juliet to understand why the love story remains the most adapted and performed of all of Shakespeare’s works. Features interviews with Orlando Bloom and Stephen Sondheim.
"But this is a 400 year old love story - can it be relevant to us today?"
Joseph, probably uniquely, has his own perspective on this play. He played Shakespeare "playing" Romeo in the film Shakespeare in Love. But he doesn’t see it as a 400 year old masterpiece - he sees it as a play that has more modern relevance than almost any of Shakespeare’s works and he wants to examine why it remains the most adapted and performed of all his plays.
So Joseph goes with the play to a South London School and to adult evening classes where the participants see their own lives reflected in the story. This is not just a piece of 16th century "heritage", it is alive and well in the 21st century.
And it’s been adapting itself to the world in which we live, ever since it was first written. It is not oan original tale. We discover where Shakespeare found the story in an obscure English poetic translation of an even older Italian Story. Shakespeare adapted and dramatised that Poem and look at how other writer have been adapting and dramatising it ever since. We visit the Royal Ballet to look at how Shakespeare inspired great Dance - and talk to Stephen Sondheim about how this play "became" West Side Story.
We ask modern actors like Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad who played the roles in New York this year about the continuing power of the play and its poetry. And Jospeh looks at other Romeos and Juliets from Zeferelli’s 1968 Italian masterpiece to Baz Luhrman’s extraordinary American re-imagination we see how Shakespeare takes a story of lost chances and missed opportunities and turns it into one of the greatest love stories ever told - so much so that just the names of the two lovers are recognised throughout the world
Joseph talks to writer Bonnie Greer about the tragic dangers of this story. Every year, tormented lovers who see a version of their own story, told in Shakespeare’s masterpiece, tragically and desperately take their own lives. But Joseph sees another and more hopeful message coming from the play. A message that remains hugely and positively relevant today, about the power of love.
Genre
Literature; Writing

How to cite this record

The Open University, "My Shakespeare". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/86001 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)