The national premiere of ENGLISH LAWN: ROMEO AND JULIET by William Shakespeare + AFTER JULIET by Sharman Macdonald will debut at Teatro Carignano in Turin. Directed by Filippo Dini and produced by Teatro Stabile Torino – Teatro Nazionale and TSV Teatro Stabile del Veneto, this diptych centers on one of the most famous love stories of all time and its ideal sequel by Sharman Macdonald. The cast includes (in alphabetical order) Alessandro Ambrosi, Francesco Bottin, Cecilia Bramati, Ilaria Campani, Maria Teresa Castello, Hana Daneri, Alice Fazzi, Matteo Federici, Iacopo Ferro, Samuele Finocchiaro, Christian Gaglione, Sara Gedeone, Francesco Halupca, Martina Montini, Greta Petronillo, Diego Pleuteri, Emma Francesca Savoldi, Andrea Tartaglia, Nicolò Tomassini, Maria Trenta.
Filippo Dini writes: "The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet can also be read as a generational clash, but it is essentially a story about young people. The diptych speaks of a massacre, the end of everything we can refer to as youth: it is not about killing the child within us, but about facing the death of younger generations, a massacre from a media perspective. The new generations are killed by social media, by eco-anxiety; from birth, they are already marked by a sense of the end, the end of our planet. This sense of death will follow them throughout their lives. For me, Romeo and Juliet tells this story. In a violent environment, of feud and war, a love is born between two young people. The most beautiful, most instinctive thing, tied to the most extraordinary nature of the human being, the ability to love and fall in love, is overcome by the hatred, war, and domination that pervades the drama.
While Shakespeare presents a tragedy with high language, in After Juliet all of this has been surpassed, flattened. With a language that is not the same as Romeo and Juliet, that cannot and does not want to be compared to Shakespeare's, Sharman Macdonald's work constitutes an ideal sequel to Romeo and Juliet. It is a modern fairy tale that speaks of love and hatred, hope and redemption. The absolute protagonists are once again the young people of a city that, as the author specifies, could be 17th-century Verona, as well as present-day London or Edinburgh. After Juliet is a dark comedy, rich in humor and pathos, which asks us to reflect on the roots of our resentment, to look with pity at all the dead, and to honor them by celebrating not hatred but brotherhood and, ultimately, life itself."
Cover photo: (c) Luigi de Palma
