#romeo und Julia

[dailymercutio]

I met these two guys at a bar and their names were also Mercutio isn’t that funny

Day 11: If you’re Mercutio and I’m Mercutio, who is driving the plane

[kittycattscathy]

Romeo und Julia (2005) left

Romeo et Juliette: les enfants de Vérone (2010) right

[saltavenegar]

I never noticed rundj Romeo’s cunty ball boots

[other-blog-for-other-stuff]

I’m sorry for being so lesbian but Lady Capulet and Lady Montague have no right being as fine as they are in the musicals

[thisgrotesquedance]

RetJ fandom are you still breathing

[kitschy-gillyflowers]

— Roméo et Juliette Comparison (Austrian & Hungarian Productions) —

Left: Hungarian 2004

Right: Austrian 2005

1. Gondolj házasságra / Freu Dich auf die Hochzeit (Tu dois te marier)

2. Erkely duett / Der Balkon (Le Balcon)

3. Szívből Szeretni / Liebe (Aimer)

4. A Párbaj / Das Duell (Le Duel)

5. Rómeó Halála / Romeos Tod (La Mort de Romeo)

[criesinsillygoose]

[giuliettacapuleti]

Marjan Shaki and Lukas Perman in Romeo und Julia. Fun fact: they were (and are) married in real life!

[sapphic-fairy-loverr]

Romeo Stimboard!

X • X • X | X • X | X • X • X

@the-lesbian-romeo!

[basilhallwardrealasfuck]

Life is great because you can listen to European musicals. But watch out!

[coffeefromvoid]

OK so here is a costume analysis? of Mark Seibert’s Tybalt, specifically his party costume.

Here are some pictures so its in your mind.

Right.

So the first thing that i notice is his bodice, it is mimicking stays.

Specifically Tudor/Elizabethan stays. Which make sense, Romeo and Juliet was written in that era.

But the reason these stays jump out at me is that it’s typically a garment worn by women underneath their dresses, it’s a support garment. The choice of

1. making the costume look like Elizabethan stays are very intentional because if they wanted to reference Tudor fashion (which is what they wanted as the skirts of the ensemble also resemble the fashion of the time, and some ensamble members even have feathers mimicking a tudor ruff) they could have gendered the costumes more by making the men wear doublets and not stays. But they didn’t

Because

2. It’s not just Tybalt that wears something like this, its almost all the male characters that wear some corset esque structured bodice in the party scene

Crunchy Merutio as reference, but the reason i noticed Tybalt’s costume the most as basically a wild mix of modern avant garde fashion and historical is because his costume during the capulet party seems the most bare.

It feels way way way less extra than Mercutio’s or Benvolio’s, and even the background ensamble is so fancy that Tybalt looks out of place when he starts to sing „Ich bin schuldlos“

The bare looking barely decorated pants make the costume look less full, and by extension force the viewer to look at the more detailed part of the costume, aka: the stays technically one is looking at the busy arms but, you soon notice it’s just a repeating pattern so you look at the stays

As i said he looks out of place, the stays make him look vulnerable, not because they are typically women’s clothing, but because they are traditionally undergarments and his being so plain make that very clear.

I can’t describe it well but when you watch the scene you’ll definitely know what i mean.

Here are some crisper images

This vulnerability that is seen in this costume is very unexpected from Tybalt, to paraphrase Mark himself (from the making of), “Tybalt is a very proud person […] And that jacket [his red jacket outside of the party] supports that. […] It’s like bullfighter’s jacket.”

This statement directly contradicts everything we learn in the party scene, we know this, but it’s just Aaa

I am sooooo normal about Tybalt you guys. So normal.

[keepthisholykiss]

i finally got around to watching austrian retj

[theghostparty]

Roméo et Juliette: de la Haine à l'Amour - Redesign - 2024

If you missed part one with Roméo and Juliette, click here. Once again, long design explanation.

When designing Mercutio specifically, I turned very explicitly inwards in my belief that Mercutio is not a Montague and should not be tied to the Montagues solely. Furthermore, Mercutio has FAMILY--he's the Prince's cousin and if we want to get really semantic about it, he also has a brother, Valentine.

All this being said, in designing Mercutio, I needed to tie him to Le Prince (Escalus) and I did that mostly in dictating that these are the characters who are allowed to wear black, mostly black leather. It's a distinction that goes mostly unnoticed until its pointed out, but no other designs incorporate deep black tones. There's also this strong, olive green tone that borrows from the Montague palette and gold hardware that borrows from the Capulet palette. The Prince's family gets to straddle the line between both worlds.

I thought very texturally for the Montagues and Capulets, so in trying to give the Prince's family something distinct, I landed on this brushstroke texture to give all the leather and denim pieces a custom feeling.

In his Les Rois du Monde look (his base look--I imagine this explicitly directorial choice to have him and the Prince enter together at the top of Vérone and have Mercutio break away to join the Montagues), there is hints of this painterly texture in blue as opposed to the gold of the Prince. I wanted to feel like every alignment Mercutio has with the Montague family is an active choice on his part. I imagine him painted those swaths of blue himself. His trousers are a bleached faded, torn denim.

We see the true royal gold in Le Bal, like, I think it's just funny to think Mercutio already owned these trousers and said "Fuck it" and wore them to dress up in. His look is explicitly jester themed. It's a little bit "Earring Magic Ken Doll" coded, which delights me to no end.

This is also a good place to point out how fixated I became on closure methods in garments. In Roméo's initial design, there is a strong focus on zippers, Le Prince's jacket is held together with gold hook and eye tape at all the seams, and with Mercutio it's all about lacing.

Part of this is in reference to the explicitly gendered ideas around corsetry and playing with that in tandem with Mercutio's generally accepted queer readings. It's also an interesting metaphor to think about being bound--by duty, by honour, by friendship, by tradition--something that Mercutio is so explicitly caught in between in the Montague-Capulet feud.

His final look during Le Duel, is a take on a Jean Paul Gautier design, and is the most partisan look for Mercutio. Doffing his jacket exposes this soft satin and coutil corset top in the faintest hint of blue. A soft underbelly of allegiance that would take to stage blood SO well (and would make who ever was dressing and laundering this show absolutely hate me as a designer, but I digress).

I also think it makes him a nice mirror to Tybalt, who's overarching design element is gold chains.

Tybalt's design is wholly referential to Mark Seibert's Tybalt. Is it because I can never get that little gold and red cropped jacket out of my brain? Perhaps. But I also like to think that design for Tybalt acts as a reflection of Mercutio. The inherent softness assigned to the Capulet family's design (silks, velvets, chiffons) plays really nicely with how much machismo is implied in Tybalt's characterization.

During Vérone, we see him in a half doublet, likely of a low-pile velvet, a satin faced silk period shirt open in an absolutely impractical way, and a floral print denim trouser. I also gave him a little cuban-heeled boot. For fashion.

Tybalt is a good place to also point out that weapons are very intentionally placed in and out of scenes. Mercutio always has a dagger. Roméo leaves his behind during Aimer. Benvolio does not carry one. Tybalt has an ornately sheathed sword. There is this undercurrent of violence for these characters that is dressed up and dressed down, but persists.

In Le Bal, I really leant into the idea of chainmail for this character, in keeping with the concept of chivalry and Arthurian influences. There's a little bit of royal purple thrown in there for good measure as well as a jaw-bone mask that, at best, is foreshadowing and, at its shallowest, looks cool as hell.

During Le Duel, I wanted to strip our fighters down to exposed skin. A lot of this is to do with one of my favourite versions of this scene, Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet. What I love about the sequence is how it devolves from nobel duel to outright brawl--from a distance to something very close and personal. It's the type of step by step tension-building that I really enjoy: where there are moments (when they're just shouting words back at forth, when they're drawing their weapons, when Mercutio would doff his jacket, when Tybalt doffs his doublet) when the fight could have de-escalated. When they could have walked away. But of course, it's not the play if they do.

I just imagine seeing Mark Seibert and Bereczki Zoltán fight would be fun, ultimately.

And now onto Benvolio. I fixated on paring down his looks, and quite frankly, if it weren't for how much I enjoy his little twink clubbing outfit, I would have probably only given him one costume. My justification for this is that Benvolio gets to live. Ostensibly, he has a lifetime past this play of changing to do. I feel very strongly about the idea of Benvolio as a narrator, Benvolio as a passive presence that is forced to become active. He's not certain in the same way that Roméo and Mercutio are about love and hate. He literally spends a whole song stagnating and waffling on how the hell he's going to tell his cousin that his wife is dead. He runs around following their impulses, patching over their problems. I have a lot of feelings about Benvolio as a character.

He's really the softest of the Montague characters in textures: his doublet is torn and slashed denim, his shirt is some sort of billowy linen blend. He has a little bit of metal flair in the form of this thigh adornment, but really he's quite simple--and my comparison to Roméo and Mercutio, he's quite warm. That hint of magenta on Roméo is a full on feature on Benvolio.

I accept any and all slander about my choices for his Le bal look, but by god do I think it's silly and it brings me joy. Suit of armour under ripped green denim, a little navy ribbed singlet with a silver chainmail crop top over it? Lensless silver glasses frames? It makes no real sense, but I stand by my "We're sneaking into the Capulet's ball tonight with very short notice, here's what we can cobble together" reasoning.

[bychertryntheatyr]

Es sollten mehr relaxed Performances existieren, dann fühlt man sich nicht so schlecht im Hoodie da zu sein.