First, a belated welcome to Longford's Backstage Theatre - a good-sized stage faced by a well-raked auditorium with perfect sight-lines from each of its 200 or so comfortable seats - where Second Age opened its first national tour of the year on Tuesday.
Second, a commendation for the commitment of Jim Culleton's production to establish and maintain "street cred" for the largely youthful audiences (preparing for their Junior Certificates) at whom it is clearly and effectively aimed.
The emotional content and meaning of Shakespeare's romantic tragedy is always straightforwardly clear, even if some of the poetry of the words is lost in their delivery. It is a necessarily sparse production, well-enough contained in Blaithin Sheerin's set of terracotta-coloured arches backing a contrived "balcony", and a highly functional hexagonal dais which can serve as street furniture, bed and tomb with excellent effect.
A small lighting rig did its best to illuminate the action and the atmosphere in Nick McCall's and Ciara McCarthy's lighting design.
A tiny cast of eight actors managed to embody 14 of the author's characters sufficiently to carry the plot along persuasively and clearly, although it was never convincing to give the Capulets Northern accents, while the Montagues and everyone else had a variety of other dialects.
Pauline Hutton's Juliet was, without question, the performance of the night. Even if her enunciation was not always crystal-clear, there could never be any doubt that, in every energetic move of her body, every impassioned leap and slump, every smile and grimace of her face, here was a real, living, breathing teenager madly and dangerously in love.
Ronan Leahy's Romeo was, in contrast, older and heavier, although his mooning after Rosaline before switching effortlessly to Juliet, and his dangerous tantrum of despair with Friar Laurence, had the ring of adolescent truth.
The cross-dressing of Andrew Bennett (as Juliet's nurse and as a rather glum Escalus, Prince of Verona) and of Charlie Bonner (as Tybalt and as a remarkably off-hand Lady Capulet) did not work for this reviewer and drew a few titters from the Longford audience. But they and Jonathan Shankey, David Parnell, Robert Price and Gary Cooke, as everyone else, got through a prodigious amount of work professionally and effectively for the most part.
Michael James Ford directed the fencing and fighting so that it was all agile and accurate enough to draw occasional gasps of involvement from a properly attentive audience.
Second Age's Romeo And Juliet tours to the Hawkswell, Sligo (today and tomorrow); the Belltable, Limerick (February 9th); the Town Hall, Galway (16th-20th); and to the Tivoli, Dublin (23rd-27th).
