Estonian production company Kinoteater puts on a version of Shakespeare’s classic “Romeo and Juliet” performed by heavy machinery. The play includes city buses, semi-trucks, excavators, and a car falling down a cliff.

Rummu

In the Estonian countryside, a limestone quarry serves as the stage for an unconventional adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet.' This production replaces human actors with vehicles, including buses, excavators, and trucks, each representing key characters in the classic tragedy. For example, Juliet is portrayed by a red 4x4 pickup truck, while Romeo is a rally truck, and other characters are played by various types of machinery.

The story remains true to Shakespeare's original plot, but the Montagues and Capulets are reimagined as rival vehicle families. Actors use the movements and interactions of the machines to convey emotions such as love, grief, and anger. The show incorporates humor, music, fireworks, and even a dramatic car falling off a cliff, earning positive reactions from audiences.

Heavy Duty Love: Estonian version of ‘Romeo and Juliet’

In a limestone quarry in the Estonia countryside, Shakespeare's most famous tragedy is getting a heavy-duty makeover. This is Romeo and Juliet Reimagined, with buses, excavators and trucks taking centre stage. It's basically a big experiment about what it means to do Shakespeare today and whether we can find new ways to do it. And a Juliet, a red 4x4 pickup truck, small in size but bringing big emotion. We kind of had this instant emotion, okay, this could be Juliet. When we saw this kind of very vain-looking semi-truck, this was Paris for us. Romeo is played by a speedy rally truck, and Mercutio and Tybalt are two excavators, able to duel with their mechanical attachments, clashing like swords. In this version of the forbidden love story, the Montagues and Capulets are transformed into the motor-ready and carburetti families, a feud told by concrete mixer, semi-trucks and city buses. But finding the right actors was only half the challenge. Actors had to find a way to express emotions, love, grief, anger, through the machinery. I would still say that even though it was cars, it felt really sweet and cute. Like when you had the scene where the cars were kind of probably kissing, you would assume, the energy was captured really well. The show sticks to the same beloved storyline, known around the world and audiences seem to approve. I think they did a great job. A lot of great humor, as we know from Kino-Theater, quite a few nice little tweaks and surprises, so I think it was great. Complete with fireworks, music and a car falling off a cliff, this new version of Romeo and Juliet might not end well for the star-crossed lovers, but it seems this mechanical tragedy has driven straight into the hearts of the audience. Linda Kincaid, CNN.

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