Flabbergast Theatre is known for its distinctive aesthetic, blending puppetry, clown, circus, dance, choral music and classical text into bold, genre-defying work…
Flabbergast Theatre return to Wilton’s Music Hall with a dreamlike, raw and unconventional take on Shakespeare’s iconic tale of star-crossed lovers. Following the run of their ethereal A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Wilton’s in 2024, Flabbergast once again bring their visceral, fantastical and boundary-breaking style to the Bard’s text – this time embracing passion, violence and ecstatic tragedy in a bold new staging of Romeo and Juliet.
This new production fuses Shakespeare’s verse with swashbuckling physicality, bawdy humour, live music, clowning and mask work. Fiercely ensemble-led and physically expressive, it strips the story back to its bones and rebuilds it through Flabbergast’s unique theatrical language – irreverent, arresting and defiantly alive.
In Flabbergast’s hands, this tale of forbidden love and spiralling violence becomes a fever dream of movement and emotion – a riot of colour, sweat, and sound, where visual inventiveness collides with raw intensity and the ensemble moves like a single, impassioned organism.
Here, the tragedy unfolds with hallucinatory clarity – language is weaponised, bodies clash like storm fronts, and the stage pulses with the rhythm of doomed desire. It’s Shakespeare as ritual, rebellion and rapture.
Mask, music, and mischief blur the line between comedy and catastrophe – the lovers’ fate is spun by tricksters and echoed in song, as Flabbergast’s clown-led chorus leads us dancing to the edge of ruin.
The world of this Romeo and Juliet feels half-remembered, like something dug up from the forest floor – all bruised fruit, splintered masks and lullabies sung by Nightingales. It doesn’t so much tell the story as summon it. Performances run from Tuesday 10 to Saturday 21 June, with various showtimes throughout the run.
Flabbergast Theatre: Romeo and Juliet
Wilton’s Music Hall
10–21 June 2025
Various times – see website for full schedule
https://wiltons.org.uk/whats-on/romeo-and-juliet
