Rebecca Saire and Patrick Ryecart and quite interesting as the leads. Saire gives a very good interpretation of Juliet and owns her scenes. She is beautiful, and her costumes are affective. Wearing clothing patterned after authentic period costumes adds a lot. She looks a little like Elsa Lanchester in "Bride of Frankenstein" in the heavy full-length dress of the day. Ryecart uses a more contemporary style, along the lines of England in the era of the Beatles and the Stones while remaining intellectually honest. It is unusual now to have a Romeo not be a teen-dream. Saire and Ryecart have some, not a lot of, chemistry. What the actors accomplish is to bring to the fore some of the questions in the plot. Why do they think springing their marriage on their families in the middle of a vendetta will not be received with horror? Or why doesn't Friar Lawrence see the likely outcome? They try to out-Machiavellian the rulers of a renaissance Italian city-state and the outcome is also predicable. The play is not the romantic tragedy it is reputed to be.Perhaps the production values could have been better if it had not been filmed in the style of a 1970s BBC program. Too many crane shots. The sets are variable. Very good background music in the credits and the musicians in the party scene are playing authentic instruments.This performance is from the first two seasons of BBC Shakespeare and is shows the original purpose which seemed to be to sell the package to school libraries from class discussion. Later they did more original interpretations of the plays and some of the actors in this are in the later plays; Ryecart, Michael Hordern, and Vernon Dobtcheff are the ones I saw.

I have noted with some surprise the extremely negative criticism of many viewers who have commented on this version of Shakespeare's' famous play, particularly with regard to Patrick Ryecart's portrayal of Romeo. I can see how his performance could be considered wooden but in my opinion he has managed, with some success, to bring about a much more naturalistic depiction of the character.Certainly, there are times when he should have perhaps brought out more emotion in his performance (such as the ballroom scene) but, for the most part, his understated portrayal works. His Romeo is a complex character whose extreme emotional state is always writhing beneath the surface and bubbles up beautifully when the occasion demands it. Whether it be expressions of rage or love, Ryecart manages to get it right what is perhaps the most faithful film version of this classic tragedy.Rebecca Saire, who for once has been well cast in a BBC production in terms of her character's age, performed well as Juliet. Sweet yet sensitive, and deeply in love : a classic portrayal in a classical reading of Shakespeare.In terms of the other memorable cast members, Alan Rickman did a good (but not a great job) as Tybalt, and I think that certain other reviewers have overpraised his performance due simply to his later celebrity. There is more to the character than his being simply broody (something which seems to be Rickman's essential reading of every role he plays). Anthony Andrews was as crazy and eccentric as I imagine Mercutio being; and if there ever was a faithful portrayal of an Elizabethan father, Michael Hordern pulled it off with gusto. Celia Johnson was great as a well-meaning and loving yet overly fussy Nurse.I enjoyed this production as a faithful version of the text without the overly dramatic nature of later film versions (particularly Luhrmann's). I feel that the director has come as close as possible to a reading that Shakespeare would recognise. An admirable recreation of a beloved classic as ever there was one!

At times I wasn't sure if this was Romeo and Juliet or Dudley Do-Right and Juliet. Sometimes Romeo seemed wooden, sometimes awkward, sometimes trying woodenly to be awkward. He seemed much older than Juliet, too, which would be interesting if it were part of the play but it isn't.Much more affecting were Juliet herself, the Nurse, and old Capulet. Some of the staging was notably well handled, including the whole Capulet ballroom scene. I couldn't help comparing Mercutio and Friar Laurence unfavorably with their Zeffirelli counterparts.It was nice to get more of the dialogue than some other film versions preserve, but on the other hand some of the cuts took away familiar lines and such cuts are always jarring.

I was in high school when this was first broadcast on public television. I liked it better than what was then the latest movie version, because the movie cut out too many lines. I'll admit that Alan Rickman made an excellent Tybalt, but that's not the only memorable performance in that production. Michael Hordern was fine as Capulet. The big surprise for me was Celia Johnson as Juliet's nurse. She was such a wonderful actress that it more than made up for the fact that she was way too old for the part. (It was years later, after her death, I believe, that I saw her in her most famous role in the David Lean movie "Brief Encounter".) It's been over twenty years since I've seen that TV production and I don't think I'll ever forget it.