It seems that almost everybody loves a great love story — if the millions of people around the world who watched a wedding in Windsor, England, on Saturday last week are anything to judge by.
Or the millions who have flocked over the past 17 years to see Gerard Presgurvic’s pop opera retelling of another English love story, William Shakepeare’s Romeo and Juliet, even if it is set in medieval Italy.
Presgurvic had made a few short films and scored others, but nothing achieved the level of success that he hit with Romeo et Juliette de la Haine a l’Amour, his first musical. While his later musicals have been on a similarly grand scale, including The Ten Commandments and Gone With the Wind, they have not matched the peak set by his first.
Photo Courtesy of Romeo Productions
He wrote the book and score in 1999, although the show did not premiere until 2001 in Paris. Several of the songs from the original show became huge hits in France and elsewhere, including Aimer (Loving) and Les Rois du Monde (The Kings of the World), as have others added to subsequent production in France and abroad over the years.
While media information packs labeled the show, and its various revampings, as “the classic French musical,” Presgurvic’s Romeo Productions Web site calls it “a musical comedy.”
Perhaps it is a way of saying that if a French bard had written the tale, it would not have ended so badly for the young lovers.
Photo Courtesy of Romeo Productions
Several previous versions of the show have visited Taipei, starting in 2007 when the company launched its first Asian tour; the last visit was in October 2016.
The young lovers and their feuding families are back at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall for an 11-show run of what is now titled Romeo & Juliette, les enfants de Verone.
The original Romeo from the Paris premiere and 2007 Taipei visit, , Damien Sargue, is also back, although minus the long flowing locks of his younger years, and without his original stage Juliette, Joy Esther, with whom he was briefly married.
Sargue, who turns 37 next month, was so popular in Taiwan and South Korea that he even in 2007 released an eponymously-titled CD locally in addition to making concert appearances in Taipei and Seoul.
There will be some other familiar faces in the cast to those who have seen earlier incarnations of the show, many of whom were here two years ago: Clemence Illiaquer as Juliette, Gregory Gonel as Benvolio, Nicolas Turconi as Tybalt, Bridgette Venditti and Moniek Boersma as the two rival mothers (Montegue and Capulet respectively), Juliette Moraine as Nurse and Frederick Charter as the Prince of Verona.
Among the newer faces are John Eyzen as Mercutio, Christophe Herault as Lord Capulet, Stephane Metro as Friar Laurence and dancer Justine Catala as Death.
Having seen the show in 2007, I would describe it as more of a rock opera with a lot of broad comedy, dancing and somersaults, plenty of long coats for the men — almost all of whom have chiseled cheekbones and wash-board abs, and high-cut skirts and low-cut corset tops for the female dancers, while the females leads wear a variety of gothic-rock outfits.
More camp than high art, the show is great fun, even if the cast does sing along to a recorded soundtrack. I just do not understand why Death has to be a dancer swanning around atop the set in a filmy nightgown.
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