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Was I in love when I was fifteen? It is true that there were several candidates for me to devote my attention to. I spent most of the year in a single-sex boarding-school and at the beginning of one term wrote increasingly passionate, although sexless, letters to a girl two years younger than me. Eventually after my third or fourth, the tone of her reply abruptly changed and I could hear in her words her mother's calming voice telling me that she was a bit too young for such strong emotions. Immediately, I understood that I had been making a fool of myself and the correspondence died soon after. Of course I had crushes on some of the boys. I spent much of the year entranced by the back of the slender neck of the youth who sat in front of me. (Perhaps because of him I still find the nape of the neck one of the most attractive parts of a man's body.) And there were other boys I wanted to be with and touch. But, although rumour had it that other boys' boarding schools were hothouses of reciprocated adolescent lust, in 1960s Scotland such acts were strictly taboo and I never touched, far less kissed the delicate hairs on that tender neck. But were these letters and was that longing love? I certainly never thought of them that way. Whatever was going on in my subconscious, my vocabulary did not stretch beyond "want". At a deeper level I was aware that desire was a more appropriate word, but whatever the emotion, because it was not returned, it was still-born. Love would only come later in my life, when I was nineteen. And when it did come it was complicated by reality - by awareness of different personalities, different backgrounds, different lifestyles. As a young man and an adult, I have found that love is often burdened by too many demands and expectations to stay afloat. These thoughts were prompted by Romeo and Juliet, The Musical, now previewing at the Piccadilly Theatre in London's West End. Written by Don Black, with music by Gérard Presgurvic, it's a full-scale production that opens in silence with Friar Lawrence gazing at the young lovers' tombs, and ends with the same friar questioning his faith as Montagues and Capulets finally renounce their rivalry. Following the wordless prologue, the show begins with a clichéd jaw-jutting standoff between the two families, some tired choreography and an orchestra too loud for the singers, but as the evening progresses the whole production comes together. Particularly gripping are the masked ball, where Romeo and his friends act as waiters, and the company swirls around the two young lovers' gradually growing awareness of each other's presence, the scene where the Nurse (excellently played and sung by Jane McDonald) runs the gauntlet of young Montagues, and the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt. My companion - who himself has trod the boards in both plays and musicals - complained there was too much singing. I disagreed. I preferred the singing to the dialogue, and only occasionally heard the influence of Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil. The set - various backdrops of Verona and art from the period - was graceful and evocative, although the raised platforms shunting hither and thither in each scene reminded me of trains at Paddington Station and the people carriers that scuttle around the international airports of Washington and Montreal. And if the plot was simplified for the audience - half of which appeared to be pre-teen - it is not the first time that Shakespeare has been amended, nor did it detract from the power of the story. I could quibble further - Tybalt (Alexis James) reminded me too much of a young Sting; the role of Juliet's suitor Paris (Tim Walton) was reduced to a cypher; the spoken dialogue veered between Shakespeare, BBC and East End; while Andrew Bevis fully exploited the range of Romeo's character as he fought and laughed and bounded across the stage, Lorna Want made the best of Juliet's limited role, dreaming and pining in her bedchamber - but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. At the death scene the required tear came to my eye, the Friar's loss of faith appealed to my reason and, occasionally an optimist, I believed in the final reconciliation between the two families. In short, do not be put off by the insipid poster now advertising the show on the London Underground, but go and see the show. It is a tribute to the intensity of the emotion portrayed by Bevis and Want, that I walked out of the theatre realising that Romeo and Juliet only love because their love is returned. Unrequited love at that age is only the same formless obsession I had at fifteen. Like Romeo, if my feelings had been reciprocated, if someone had stared into my eyes with the same longing and fascination with which I refrained from staring into theirs, then my confusion and uncertainty would have fallen away. Had I been loved and known I was loved, I would have climbed balconies, braved ridicule and threats, because love would have made all these acts, my whole life, possible. And Romeo and Juliet's love is overwhelming because they are so young and inexperienced. With nothing to compare it to, with no knowledge of each other, with their every need taken care of, love suddenly expands to fulfil the whole of their lives. It is not an obsession, because obsession implies an exclusion of everything else, and there is nothing to be excluded. Friendships, hobbies, family obligations are nothing compared to this overwhelming need to be with the other person. And it is because their love is so pure that Romeo and Juliet have to die. If we see them grow old, we must also see the eventual intrusion of family obligations, political alliances, money, children into their lives. Their love may remain strong and it may mature, but it will never be as all-encompassing, as pure as it once was. Few of us are truly in love at fifteen, but all of us wish that we were or had been. And so as children we see Romeo and Juliet as a fairy tale; as teenagers we see in the story the potential that lies within us, and as adults we see what we were once capable of and hope that our children find. |
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| 1 November 2002 |
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Martin Foreman |