Such Tweet Sorrow

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s micro-blogging treatment of the most famous love story of all has been running for ten days now. Enough time to pass judgment on a genuinely innovative take on Romeo & Juliet.

Such Tweet Sorrow has taken the story out of Verona into 21^st Century England. Juliet is bored at school. Her sister, Jess, ran the London Marathon yesterday. The star-cross’d lovers now woo each other on Twitter.

Such Tweet Sorrow is being improvised by a cast of six RSC actors, working over five weeks with a couple of authors and an RSC director. The timeline is designed to be real-time, so you see (a version of) Shakespeare’s story – the plot that is -unfolding on Twitter.

But not his poetry. As I write this, Tybalt has just come out with: “Could of sworn I just saw that prick @mercuteio leave. Surely he would have the balls to confront me.”

And that’s where I’m left thinking that in this case, the medium is not the message. Romeo and Juliet has seen countless interpretations. But it’s those that retain the poetry, some of the finest the English language will ever see, that work. Baz Luhrmann’s modern re-telling retains pride of place in my DVD collection as a faultless example of cinema. Even the exception - West Side Story - works as a musical, not as a version of Romeo and Juliet.

I applaud the RSC for trying. And I’m sure we’ll find an art form that prospers in Twitter. But for now, Shakespeare isn’t it.