Romeo & Juliet by Robert Icke
13th May 2026
My brain is still fresh from Romeo & Juliet and I’m trying to find the correct words for what it actually felt like sitting through it because “funny”, “sad”, “modern”, “joyful” don’t even begin to touch the performance. I was so close to the stage it felt less like watching theatre and more like being pulled into another reality entirely.
It feels as if I’ve stepped into other worlds and they’re now just as real to me as this room is.
I still have the smell of expensive perfume stuck in my nose from everyone around me near the stage, mixed with smoke from the production, flashing lights like sudden atomic bursts, moments that almost scramble your brain into another timeline.
The whole thing felt like rewinding time while moving forward through it at once. The words speak so deeply; raw, passionate, almost dangerous. At one point I kept thinking: what song is that? Is that Radiohead? It wasn’t… but I’ve listened to this track before, I just can’t place the track. Everything carried this strange familiarity, like remembering a dream you’ve already lived through before.
Robert Icke’s adaptation plays with time in this nonlinear, dream-logic way that genuinely got under my skin. It felt recursive, almost multiversal, like every possible ending existed at once. Watching it, I felt as though the performance was stepping directly into ideas I’ve been scribbling around for years in Metamorphosis, Apollo & Daphne, and all these thoughts about repetition, transformation, fate, and time folding in on itself.
Sadie's performance was something I genuinely couldn't have imagined beforehand.
It was so powerful it almost didn't feel live, the same goes for the set, the lighting, everyone involved. There were moments where it all blurred together into something cinematic, feverish.
And Noah as Romeo the way he looked at Sadie's Juliet completely starstruck, utterly consumed by her words. That look will stay with me for a very long time. It felt like watching someone discover love and grief simultaneously.
The whole production exists in this strange dream-state where Shakespeare collides with 21st century sound, fractured timelines, alternate possibilities, and flashes of the original text alongside new words from Robert Icke. It feels less like a retelling of Romeo & Juliet and more like being trapped inside the memory of it, a memory that keeps changing every time you touch it.
I left feeling heavily inspired, and I suppose that's what great theatre is supposed to do: rearrange something in your mind a little.