Romeo, I'm sorry, but we have to run: the Vakhtangov team played Shakespeare in concrete.

An empty stage, concrete slabs, fittings, a hat with earflaps and the endless passage of time — this is how director Oleg Dolin saw the immortal love story of William Shakespeare in the new production of the Vakhtangov Theater "Romeo and Juliet". The action does not take place among Renaissance palaces. On the contrary, the plot seems to have been transferred to the back of the world, where the feeling is forced to survive among iron, dullness and human anger. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.

Verona on the outskirts

Shakespeare wrote the tragedy of the young lovers around the middle of the 1590s. Since then, the play has gone through hundreds of theatrical interpretations and dozens of cinematic versions. From Franco Zeffirelli's classic 1968 film and Baz Luhrmann's 1996 version to Timothy Scott Bogart's 2025 musical, the world returns to this story over and over again.

— Shakespeare is very connected with time, with the moment in history when he appears in your life. We know fragmentally how it was before, but the twentieth century and Shakespeare's entire work show that his plays are inseparable from the historical period in which they were performed on the Russian stage. There are many things that attract me in this material, and above all, the word and rhythm are the main driving force of the piece. In "Romeo and Juliet" we are attracted by the opportunity to formulate what is for us today a "world of ugliness and evil", in which the characters are trying to find happiness, Oleg Dolin told reporters.

The production begins behind a closed curtain. A word sounds in the dark, the text of a British playwright. This almost mystical intonation is deceptively attuned to the classical reading.

But the curtain opens, and the audience sees not romantic Verona, but emptiness. No balconies, fountains, or cobbled streets of the flourishing city. According to the idea of the artist Maxim Obrezkov, the stage space is almost devoid of scenery. It is cut through by metal beams, ladders, grids, steel rods and concrete blocks connected by reinforcement. The gloomy black backdrop only enhances the feeling of a cold industrial environment.

The picture resembles an industrial zone or a working suburb. It's as if the action is not taking place in the famous city of lovers, but in its abandoned backyards.

Dolin explains this decision with memories of his youth — about the first timid kisses that often occur not under the balconies of palaces, but in empty entrances and deserted alleys. The director deliberately removes all distractions — complex sets and lavish costumes, leaving the viewer alone with the story.

The Crossroads of Fate

At first, Romeo (Gregory is Healthy) madly in love with Rosaline. His first teenage passion makes him painfully sensitive to the jokes of his friends, Mercutio (Alexander Kolyasnikov) and Benvolio (Vasily Seregin). They're just thinking about how to get to the Capulet ball. It is there that Romeo meets Juliet (Polina Rafeeva), who has changed his world forever.

Their meeting looks like a sudden flash in the middle of a noisy intersection. Everything is moving around: Juliet's parents (Oleg Lopukhov and Maria Shastina) are fussing over their chosen fiance, Count Paris (Vladimir Simonov Jr.), the wet nurse (Asya Domskaya) is trying to set her foster daughter on the right path. And only Romeo seems to freeze. He can't move: Juliet is in front of him.

The director resorts to such semantic accents repeatedly. This dramatically speeds up the action, forcing the actors to rush across the stage and shout out the text, sometimes bringing the mise-en-scene to the grotesque. It's like the rapid passage of time. Then suddenly the rhythm stops, slowing down the breathing of the performance, as if foreshadowing the fatal plan of Brother Lorenzo (Yuri Kraskov), which will lead the lovers to death.

The tragedy of love and time

Almost all the roles are performed by young artists, and this is one of the main advantages of the production. The Vakhtangov Theater does not just release young people on the big stage, but trusts them to keep the whole performance.

Romeo is played by Grigory Zdorov, who graduated from the Shchukin Institute in 2023 and joined the theater's trainee group in the same year. His character is impetuous, nervous, and sometimes behaves like a boy. This is not a handsome romantic beau, but a teenager who still does not understand what to do with his feelings.

One detail may surprise the audience: for a significant part of the first act, Romeo wears a hat with earflaps. In the context of the Italian plot, it looks unexpected. It can be assumed that in this way the director deliberately erases geography. After all, this story could have happened anywhere — in Italy, Russia or any other country.

The role of Juliet is played by Polina Rafeeva, who appeared on the stage of the Vakhtangov Theater during her studies at the Shchukin Institute. The actress admitted that she had never dreamed of playing a role in a Shakespearean tragedy, but after reading the play during her studies, she burst into tears from the beauty of the style and the sublimity of her feelings.

Juliet is only 13 years old, Romeo is 16. They reach out to each other with that absolute sincerity that only happens in their youth. They catch every breath, hide under the shadow of ancient trees, even imaginary ones, and secretly marry, risking exposure and exile. And while love is just beginning, the viewer does not want to remember the tragic ending. But Dolin is constantly reminded of the main theme of the play.

— Shakespeare talks about hostility, about the anger that drives a person to kill, about the inability to cope with this growing hatred. It seems to me that this is a very modern story. It concerns our lives, the air we breathe, and the streets where our children grow up. It's literally in the air. We seem to have become more tolerant, more mature as a society, but again and again we come back to one thing: people are filled with terrible fire and cannot accept something. This happens not only between countries, but also in families and between loved ones. That's why it's a necessary conversation today," says the director.

Dolin's message is clear: tragedy is inevitable, and love in this story is not so much a saving force as a sentence. After all, as every schoolboy knows, the story of Romeo and Juliet will remain the saddest in the world.