1. Actor and theatre-owner Richard Burbage (who was played by
Martin Clunes in the very loosely historical
film Shakespeare in Love) is believed to have been
the first Romeo. The premiere date of the play is uncertain, but
the first quarto version was printed in 1597, and it is thought to
have been written and first performed sometime in the previous
decade.
2. In 1662, Mary Saunderson became the first woman to play Juliet
professionally due to pre-Restoration laws against women performing
on stage, which were changed in 1660.
3. Romeo and Juliet experienced a renaissance in the
US in the mid-19th century, almost 100 years after it was first
produced there, thanks to the moving interpretation performed by
two sisters Susan and Charlotte Cushman, who played Romeo and
Juliet respectively.
4. Edwin Booth (brother to the man who assassinated Abraham
Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, also an actor) performed a season
ofRomeo and Juliet opposite his future wife Mary
McVicker in 1869 (four years after his brother changed history).
The production, described as the most elaborate ever seen in
America, ran for six weeks and was the most financially successful
ever seen in that country.
5. There are 24 operas based on Romeo and Juliet, as
well as 39 film and television versions and six ballets.
6. When the 46-year-old Margot Fonteyn and 27-year-old Rudolph
Nureyev performed the premiere of Sir Kenneth Macmillan's
ballet Romeo and Juliet in 1965, they received
43 curtain calls and the safety curtain eventually had to be drawn
to force the audience to leave the theatre.
7. Since the 1980s, an organisation of volunteers called Club di Giulietta(Juliet's Club) based in Verona have been reading and replying to
thousands of letters addressed to Juliet that arrive in the city
annually. Within the city of Verona, there is a house claiming to
be the Casa di Giulietta that features a bronze statue of Juliet in
the courtyard and it is believed that rubbling the statue's right
breast (now significantly diminished after decades of groping) will
bring good luck. The house, a major tourist attraction, also
features a graffiti wall on which visitors can write their name and
the name of their loved one.
8. Hugh Jackman played Romeo in a Western Australian Academy of
Performing Arts production in 1994 directed by Wayne Harrison and
performed at The Wharf.
9. Natalie Portman was originally cast as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's
film Romeo+Juliet but it was felt that the age
gap between her (15) and Leonardo Di Caprio (22) was too great, so
she was replaced by Claire Danes.
10. In 2010, the Royal Shakespeare Company (together with the
Mudlark Production Company) presented a Twitter version of the play
called Such Tweet Sorrow, in which actors improvised
a version of the play and interacted with their audience.
By Alex Lalak
Romeo and
Juliet, Drama Theatre, 17 September - 2 November, 2013.
(Top: Leonardo di Caprio and Claire Danes. Above: The Cushman
sisters. Below: Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey in Franco
Zeffirelli's 1968 film version. Bottom: Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph
Nureyev)