An inclusive production of *Romeo and Juliet* is, of course, set to be a hit at #boulevard

Laugh at them or laugh with them? That’s more or less the question you ask yourself when you go to see an ‘inclusive’ performance featuring ‘actors with disabilities’. Are we going to sit back and watch the clumsy struggles of endearing-looking amateurs, or are we going to experience a performance where everything has been carefully thought out and deliberately crafted? After all, we don’t want to watch people actually falling over, but clowns and acrobats who sell us that illusion. And they do so as well as possible.

Comp. Marius and Het Scheldeoffensief’s *Romeo and Juliet* has been billed as an ‘inclusive adaptation of Shakespeare’ featuring young actors with and without disabilities. What’s more, it involves throwing crockery and slamming doors. This Monday, the play had its Dutch premiere at the Boulevard Theatre Festival in Den Bosch. It was up to us to check whether the rave reviews from Flanders were not exaggerated.

St Nicholas

Well then: the Flemish press is right: this ‘inclusive’ Romeo and Juliet, performed by the experienced actors of Marius Comp. and the mentally and physically ‘disabled’ actors of Het Scheldeoffensief make for a brilliant production. Are they performing Shakespeare? Yes and no. The famous, four-hundred-year-old drama about the young lovers from rival families has been transformed by a cheerful Waas Gramser, with the help of Saint Nicholas, into gripping, rhythmic language where rhyme and filler phrases ensure that no one misses a single detail of the story.

In this way, the performers – both the professional actors and the members of the Scheldeoffensief – do not have to overcome any limitations to convey what no work of art can do without: the joy of creation. That ingredient – the umami of any artistic experience – is employed so convincingly that the hour and a half on this exceptionally cool summer’s evening flies by.

It goes without saying

The joy of the performance, thanks to the actors’ wholehearted conviction, ensures that we laugh and cry with them, not at them. That is liberating. And then it happens – the very thing everyone secretly goes to the theatre for: transformation. As the performance unfolds, you no longer see the actors with their disabilities, but flesh-and-blood characters who bring a universal story to life, amidst all the jokes and antics. Then a death scene – and this play has plenty of them – suddenly becomes truly moving.

In this way, *Romeo and Juliet* becomes a work of art in which the concept of ‘inclusivity’ is taken entirely for granted.

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