I Love is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet that features only the two central characters and fuses a mixture of the original text, movement and a classical soundtrack. The production, from Outbox Theatre, attempts to reinterpret the well-known tragedy into a lighter tale in which love conquers all. 

The two actors, Min Kim and Dawn Adams, clearly have a great understanding of the text and imbue their delivery with poetic longing and desire. The words of different scenes fuse together to create a lyrical soundscape out of the original work. 

The set consists primarily of a trapeze and a silk rope. The director, Elena Stejko, makes great use of physicality in parts of the performance; particularly after Romeo’s banishment where he tries desperately to regain access to Verona. Min Kim throws himself about the stage with a terrific energy and true desperation.

It would have been nice, however, to see more physicality from Adams too, as she mostly sits still whilst Kim jumps around her, immediately placing a disparity between the characters. Also, whilst the rope is used occasionally throughout, the trapeze is only utilised fully before the opening of the play and therefore feels a bit spare during the performance. 

The musical accompaniment – which includes music by Vivaldi, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky – provides an atmospheric soundtrack to the piece. It is unfortunate for the performers that the studio space at TAPAC does not block out any light, forcing them to perform in the bright sunshine, and immediately giving the piece more a feel of a rehearsal than a final performance.

I felt that the mixture of different elements within this piece prevented it from ever fully committing to one idea. It was not entirely true to the original text but it was still dense with Shakespeare’s words. It was not a movement piece but physicality was employed at certain points throughout. It was not a modern-day adaptation but neither was it of the time. I can see that Stejko is trying to create a fusion of all these elements, but without enough dedication to any of them the piece did not work together as a cohesive whole.

I felt that if I had not been very familiar with the text, the story may have become very confusing in places, especially without any other characters on stage. Equally, however, so much of Shakespeare’s text was used that I Love almost did not need to class itself as a reinterpretation at all. I would have liked to have seen much less text and more movement in order to create a truly new take on this work. 

The actors both deliver very fine performances and there are some interesting directorial decisions here, but they are yet to be fully realised.