Theatre reviews: Romeo & Juliet | Sherlock Holmes: Scandal in Bohemia

Sherlock Holmes, Botanic Gardens, Glasgow ★★★★

Verona is a construction site in this latest version of Romeo & Juliet, staged by artistic director Gordon Barr for the Bard In The Botanics season. Scaffolding, warning signs and high fencing dominate Heather Grace Currie’s design, and on the fencing, the pinned flowers, notes and toys people place, these days, at any spot where a tragic death has taken place.

In this version, Star Penders’s subdued Benvolio enters first, in his signature leather jacket, mooching along the fencing, reading the messages, including one – read out almost under his breath – that reflects the first lines of the play’s famous prologue, with its reference to “star-cross’d lovers”. And there, in those first few seconds, are all the strengths and weaknesses of Barr’s version in a nutshell; a little short on the lush lyrical beauty and grave political context of Shakespeare’s tragedy, but – in his own small-cast version, designed to focus on the young characters – full of a youthful energy and immediacy that’s always thrilling, and sometimes almost shocking.

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So the story unfolds, with Montague boys Mercutio and Benvolio – and Romeo, when not distracted by love – roaming the hot summer streets in search of a rumble with the Capulets, represented by Benjamin Keachie's nervy Tybalt. Bailey Newsome delivers a memorable turn as a brilliantly poetic Glasgow Mercutio, Sam Stopford’s Romeo is quietly intense; and when the three gatecrash the Capulets’ summer ball, Romeo’s romantic yearnings pivot instantly towards the host’s daughter Juliet, played by Lola Aluko with a lusty, forthright energy that sometimes rushes past the early beauty of her romance with Romeo, but works brilliantly in the comic sequences with the nurse (also an excellent Star Penders), and in the ferocity of her confrontation with her father, Newsome again.

READ MORE: Joyce McMillan on A Midsummer Night's Dream and Faustus at Bard in the Botanics

After Mercutio’s sudden death, in the most poignantly well-observed knife crime incident in all literature, Barr’s tightly cut version shudders towards tragedy at speed, with mischance after mischance haunting Keachie’s intense Friar Laurence in his efforts to save the young couple. Even 430 years on from its first performance, the tragedy seems so tantalising, and so unnecessary, that it requires a slightly longer and weightier coda than this version gives it; perhaps a return of the Duke – strongly represented throughout by Stopford with a megaphone – to speak his own final lines, rather than leaving them to a grief-hushed Benvolio.

Yet the fresh, driving energy of this Romeo & Juliet never fails, until the two lovers breathe their last; and as a portrait of a younger generation failed by the stubborn hate-mongering of their elders, Shakespeare’s much-loved old tragedy often seems more timely than ever, in this summer of 2025.

Over in the Kibble Palace, meanwhile, Bard associate director Jennifer Dick offers a brisk and fascinating 85-minute take on the Sherlock Holmes myth. Dick’s play revolves around Holmes’s relationship with the brilliant adventuress Irene Adler, and uses short versions of three Conan Doyle stories to explore a feminist narrative in which Adler repeatedly matches or outfoxes the great detective, who – unusually – is far from indifferent to her charms, and who lacks her edge of steel when it comes to destroying men who have mistreated women.

In Dick’s production – perfectly placed, for date and atmosphere, in the high-Victorian Kibble Palace – Adam Donaldson plays an unusually bewildered Holmes, not quite brilliant enough to get on the right side of feminist history, while Rebecca Robin dominates the stage as a gloriously smart and beautiful Adler, Stephen Arden narrates as a wryly reflective Watson and James Boal plays all three villains in fine style. The result is a hugely enjoyable fresh look at Sherlock, for our disruptive times; and one executed with skill and flair, to a gently brilliant musical score and soundscape assembled by Dick herself, for our delight.

Both shows are at the Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, until 2 August