Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty’s Romeo and Juli­et is an utter tri­umph of stage­craft.

The mood with­in Stu­dio 77, the cam­pus’ main black­box the­atre, seems fit­ting­ly Shake­speare­an as thun­der rolls over­head and rain pours down out­side. We’re all here to see Romeo and Juli­et, arguably one of the­atre’s most played-out sto­ries, but I’ve nev­er seen it quite like this.

Our cast, mem­bers of the Thea302 class, have found them­selves in an aban­doned the­atre. As they dance about mad­ly, and fill the space with their ener­gy, they become some­how pos­sessed by the ghosts of Romeo and Juli­et past, and draw the sto­ry out into the space with us.

The thrust stage, one of Shake­speare’s trade­marks, is used bril­liant­ly, and with much aban­don — I’m fair­ly sure I got bits of cau­li­flower down my shirt at one point.

Want to know how an assort­ment of veg­eta­bles fac­tors into this bonkers equa­tion?

Well, you’ll just have to see the show.

Direc­tor Dr Lori Leigh has tak­en a play that is often seen as just a tragedy and made it into some­thing big­ger and brighter. While there is, of course, still tragedy — we can’t have a hap­py end­ing in this cau­tion­ary tale, after all — there is a bawdi­ness and a joy to this piece that can­not be chal­lenged. We tend to focus on the sad­ness of this sto­ry — the war­ring of two fam­i­lies; bru­tal­i­ty, mur­der and grief — but in actu­al­i­ty, the first half can almost be read as a com­e­dy. It’s two horny teens, thrust togeth­er by cir­cum­stance, who want noth­ing more than to escape the bureau­cra­cy of their fam­i­lies and end up hap­pi­ly togeth­er.

That is cer­tain­ly, uh, shown in this iter­a­tion.

Major kudos to the cast, crew, and direc­tor, who’ve made a well-known script utter­ly mad and beau­ti­ful. Our Romeo (Caleb Hill) and Juli­et (Rosie Glover), played their roles with an incred­i­ble youth­ful vibran­cy. Their rela­tion­ship was so inti­mate and lust­ful that it felt odd­ly voyeuris­tic to be watch­ing it, and I loved the strength with which it was por­trayed.

I’d also like to men­tion the role of the Nurse (played by Mol­lie Fox Fras­er). Usu­al­ly I have a hard time with that char­ac­ter — as com­ic relief she’s always weird­ed me out — but Fras­er played her with a legit­i­ma­cy and an ener­gy that trans­lat­ed very well once the sto­ry start­ed to get dark­er.

Romeo and Juli­et has more pop songs than you’d expect, a whole ton of dick jokes, and a earnest heart that’ll stay with me for a long time. The cast was incred­i­bly strong, there was a very pow­er­ful aes­thet­ic, and the whole pro­duc­tion was an absolute delight to see. I hope to see these per­form­ers in oth­er things soon, because they’re all damn tal­ent­ed.

What an absolute­ly bril­liant piece of the­atre.