Romeo & Juliet – Harold Pinter Theatre review by Andrea Carnevali

Sadie Sink as Juliet and Noah Jupe as Romeo at the Harold Pinter Theatre, 2026

Romeo & Juliet ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Harold Pinter Theatre, London, 2026

Sadie Sink is absolutely brilliant as Juliet, and with electric chemistry between the two leads and a bold, stripped-back production from Robert Icke, this Romeo & Juliet feels urgent, alive, and unmissable.

A bit of a diversion here… This wasn’t a movie (though there were enough movie actors in it), but I liked this so much that I feel like I want to talk about it.

We went mostly for Sadie Sink, who we loved in Stranger Things, and here she plays Juliet. And I’m very happy to say she is absolutely brilliant. She makes Juliet feel modern, accessible and never stuffy. The way she speaks Shakespeare’s words, making them sound spontaneous, never rehearsed, almost improvised, is a beauty to behold, and so is the way she throws herself into the role physically, punching pillows, waving her arms around, jumping on the bed in sheer joy, full of life with that teenage energy that never felt out of place. She makes Juliet feel real rather than ‘performed’, which is exactly what you want from a production like this.

Her chemistry with Noah Jupe, who plays Romeo, felt electric and intoxicating, and at the end of the day, that has to be the beating heart of the production.

Jupe (the boy from A Quiet Place and more recently Hamnet) is also very, very (shall I say ‘very’ again) good. I loved the way he drew the audience directly into Romeo’s experience during the balcony scene. It felt fresh and engaging, like I had not seen it done before. He beautifully balances the romantic yearning and the vulnerability, and his gentle and charismatic nature makes his eventual tragic descent all the more painful.

However good the two main leads are (and they were, if you’re still unsure), they’re also accompanied by a series of great supporting actors.

My favourite was Kasper Hilton-Hille, who plays Mercutio with such anarchic energy and hilarious cheekiness that it’s impossible not to be swept along by him. I saw a review by Metro that called his performance ‘star-making stuff’ and I agree completely: he pretty much steals every single scene he’s in.

The rest of the cast includes Clark Gregg as Capulet, which made my son extremely excited, after all, Agent Coulson himself from S.H.I.E.L.D. (Marvel stuff, for the uninitiated), and a magnificent Clare Perkins as the Nurse.

It’s interesting to see this only a few weeks after Baz Luhrmann’s version with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, another modern take on the play. Here too, director Robert Icke decides to keep the dialogue and modernise everything else, but while Luhrmann used all the tricks of cinema at his disposal to shout the subtext at the audience (brilliantly, in his own way), here the production is much more stripped-back, with a minimalist set, often just a single bed in the middle, and a clever use of lighting that forces you to focus entirely onto the emotions… and the text.

Icke does take a few bold decisions too. He tightens the pacing by using a live onstage digital clock, reminding the audience that the whole play takes place in just a few days, which adds a tragic, relentless ticking time-bomb drive to the plot and deepens that sense of doom as the end approaches.

It also uses a sort of ‘sliding doors’ device a few times, probably six or seven times across the play, to remind the audience that this is really a story about fate. The play literally stops and pauses, giving us brief glimpses into how life could have turned out had fate tipped the other way: what if Romeo had never met Juliet at the party, or if that infamous letter had actually arrived in time, or if Juliet had awakened a few minutes earlier while Romeo was by her deathbed? Icke plays with those questions and, for a few tantalising seconds, lets us indulge in the possibility of an alternative version (without ever changing the dialogue) before a flash of light, followed by a brief moment of total darkness, and the story rewinds back to what Shakespeare intended.

This ‘multiverse’ approach suggests that the whole story is essentially the culmination of a series of fortunate, or more often unfortunate, small accidents.

A gimmick? Maybe. But an innocent one, and an interesting one too, which gives food for thought and actually makes the ending even more heartbreaking.

The inclusion of a couple of modern songs, including a cover of ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’, sounds a bit jarring on paper, but in the end they’re done tastefully and well integrated.

In the end, let’s face it: no matter how many interpretations and modernisations you throw at this, the truth remains that this is still one of the strongest plays ever written. Still as powerful, emotional, funny, and adaptable as ever.

It plays for only a few more weeks, and I strongly suggest you try to grab those last few seats left.

Andrea Carnevali is a Bafta winning film maker who lives in Chiswick, and a co-creator of the Chiswick In Film festival.