Romeo & Juliet & Tom & Gwyneth

 Last month we screened Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; Tom Stoppard's absurdist exploration of the unluckiest characters in Hamlet.

This Thursday, Tom Stoppard sets his sights on Romeo and Juliet in a very mainstream and high profile film.

Last week's West Side Story (which is of course a modern re-telling of Romeo and Juliet) has been criticised by some because Maria was not played by a Puerto Rican. 

As Shakespeare in Love reminds us, the original Juliet was not played by a woman.

Tom Stoppard's very sharp screenplay celebrates Shakespeare and his writing without concerning itself with anything as trivial as "historical accuracy" (Shakespeare himself would have been so proud).

Although many aspects of the film are accurate, the story itself is complete fiction. Yes there were two rival theatrical houses in Elizabethan England; yes, women were barred from appearing on stage (in England, anyway; the rest of Europe had no such edict); yes, Christopher Marlowe was the more famous writer of the era, and was killed in a pub brawl, and yes, John Webster was a noted playwright of the next generation with a penchant for extreme violence and gore in his plays. 

All of that is set against a highly speculative story that effectively "reverse engineers" Romeo and Juliet, and allows Tom Stoppard to run amok with theatrical traditions (both modern and Elizabethan). 

For me, this film (sadly) has one serious flaw which prevents it from being quite the masterpiece it could be (more about that on Thursday) but it is nonetheless a very witty and heartfelt celebration of Shakespeare and the creative process.

We'll be screening Shakespeare In Love at 7.30 on Thursday, the 12th of May at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.