Love in a time of hate

THE new Shakespeare in the Park drops the four-centuries-old Romeo & Juliet into a futuristic dystopia. A grey industrial stage with interlaced Escher-like staircases hints at claustrophobia and paranoia. Its jagged backdrop suggests the steel and glass of skyscrapers battling for room at the top. The costumes and make-up are a cross between South-east Asian royalty and British punk.

The streets seem to be lined with patrol cars. The powerful do everything to stay powerful. And the young lose their innocence all too quickly. The scene is thus set for a kind of madness and violence that's about to descend on two wealthy feuding families, the Montagues and the Capulets.

The two young ones we are most concerned with are, of course, Romeo and Juliet. Romeo (played by Thomas Pang) may be the scion of the powerful Montagues. But the streetwise lad seems to spend his days wandering about alone and falling in love with young women. The new object of his affection will soon be Juliet (Cheryl Tan), a lovely and precocious girl with a rebellious streak, yearning to break out of her family strictures.