Way before ‘emo’ was a thing, William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet saw two star-cross’d teens bring down a plague on both their houses, ‘these violent delights’ leading them both to an early grave with collateral damage.
More than 400 years later, audiences the world over still will them to make better choices, so that their all-consuming passion can at least stand a chance. But it’s never to be. And therein lies our undying fascination.
Romeo + Juliet: Baz
Baz Luhrmann’s sensational 1996 film, styled Romeo + Juliet, isn’t the first to update the action. Stephen Sondheim’s musical-turned-movie West Side Story is a magnificently toe-tapping example, with Abel Ferrara’s 80s Manhattan-set China Girl also amplifying the street gang aspect. But the Australian director, reuniting with Strictly Ballroom co-writer Craig Pearce, worked mercurial magic.
Relocating the action to the fictional US enclave of Verona Beach, with some scenes shot in Miami but the majority in Mexico City, the jaw-dropping film exists in the sweet spot between Luhrmann’s tendency towards too much and his knack for tenderness.
A great deal of his success is down to the impeccable pairing of My So-Called Life lead Clare Danes with What’s Eating Gilbert Grape star Leonardo DiCaprio. Their angel-winged and chain-mailed fishtank meet cute – a logistical headache for cinematographer Donald McAlpine – is legendary, the stuff of many a dress-up.
Teenaged me, a Shakespeare stan and amateur dramatics nerd, was besotted. I wasn’t alone. This frenetic gun-slinging spin stormed the box office, introducing the Bard’s work to many who might otherwise have body-swerved it. As did the triple-platinum soundtrack, featuring everyone from marvellously morose Radiohead to Kym Mazelle’s camp fantastic cover of ‘Young Hearts Run Free’.
But does it hold up today?
Romeo + Juliet in 2025 … with live band + choir
‘As I hate hell,’ yes, is the answer. It’s as awe-inspiring as it ever was, both balls to the wall, blowing up gas stations, and achingly delicate, as friends and lovers fall.
Almost 30 years on, experiential UK outfit Backyard Cinema has brought their special presentation – replete with a live band and choir – to the super-sized Astor Theatre screen in Melbourne.
And by Jove, does this sun-kissed midsummer’s dream gone horribly wrong look good and sound even better with these four-dimensional additions. If you’ve ever been to a live-scored session before, you might expect the singers and band to do their thing. Not so, here.
Instead, there’s an extended preamble as the spectacular performers, running the gamut from rock star to angelic choir, take to the Astor stage and perform several of the film’s key numbers, including the dreamy a cappella renditions of Prince’s When Doves Cry and Rozalla’s Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good) immortalised on screen by the late Quindon Tarver.
Romeo + Juliet: haunting stuff
Haunting stuff, it’s amplified by the atmospheric accoutrement of faux candles lining the stage’s edge and neon crosses aglow either side of a floral altar, as if Catherine Martin’s astonishing production design had tumbled out of the frame and into our wondrous evening.
It’s as if we’re invited to the Capulet ball, or Romeo and Juliet’s secret wedding, officiated on screen by Pete Postlethwaite’s Hawaiian shirt-wearing Father Laurence, whose dabbling with plant-based toxins has a whiff of drug dealing on the side of god’s business.
Adopting Postlethwaite’s role as our MC, abundantly gifted star of stage and screen Nadine Garner is a surprising weak link, clearly reading her lines and oddly hollering Shakespeare’s supple, poetic language like a carnival barker without the ability to sell a pause.
Even the more bombastic elements of Luhrmann’s gutsy film manage to navigate iambic pentameter nimbly. Like John Leguizamo’s hissing, spitting Tybalt, Harold Perrineau’s drag queen Mercutio, all tragically unrequited queer love, and the muscular swagger of Dash Mihok’s Benvolio, Romeo’s big-hearted cuz.
On rewatch, the latter shares best-in-show with the gorgeous embrace of Miriam Margolyes’ nurse. A rock in the hard place where Juliet winds up, she’s a treasure. A scene in which she throws herself between Juliet and her father, Paul Sorvino’s rampaging Fulgencio Capulet, who has already struck his wife, Diane Venora’s Gloria, hits harder than I recalled.
Romeo + Juliet: to the beat of their own drum
Garner’s too-broad turn aside, this Romeo + Juliet plus is such sweet sorrow. Our choir returns after an intermission, when things have taken a turn, then delivers a tear-jerking requiem when all is said and done.
Backyard Cinema have assembled a glorious digital collage of the film’s most memorable sequences to accompany these live interludes. They include Mercutio’s ballroom best, Danes and DiCaprio’s pool dip flip of the balcony scene and that dread-filled final dalliance in her tomb, after Romeo has fled police helicopters. The moment her fluttering resuscitation from Father Laurence’s tincture has us willing Will to change their awful fates.
These sequences seamlessly stitch into Edwina Moore’s anchorwoman chorus, bookending the film with news of the escalating grudge between ‘two households, both alike in dignity,’ one of Luhrmann’s niftiest reimaginings.
But for many movie geeks, one of the most magical moments of the night may well be the Astor’s house lights swirling in unison with the swaying spotlights of the classic 20th Century Fox ident, its drumbeat-led fanfare in lockstep.
Both Backyard Cinema’s stars and Luhrmann’s cast and crew deserve applause for this much ado about everything.
Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet: A Cinematic Experience Framed by a Live Choir and Band is at the Astor Theatre, Melbourne, until 28 September 2025.
