Manga Shakespeare Romeo And Juliet

Manga Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet by Richard Appignanesi, artwork by Sonia Leong

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Adapting Shakespeare and then adapting Romeo and Juliet is not the easiest of tasks to set yourself. Not only do you have to wrestle with an incredibly familiar text that everybody knows (and even if they don’t, they still sort of do – this story’s so deeply embedded into popular culture now), you also have to find a fresh approach for a story which has already been told a thousand times. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to do so; classics survive when we retell them and remake them for new audiences, when we re-purpose the story to tell new stories and have new resonance for new readers, when we are not afraid of them. And when they are plays, in particular, we should not be afraid. These are stories to be performed and made real for people and so there’s an opportunity here to play (pun unintentional!) and see if something interesting happens.

And something interesting does happen here. The combination of Sonia Leong’s determinedly youthful and vibrant art coupled with a well-edited text from Richard Appignanesi managed to make me look again at a story I know very well. I really liked the work done with the Nurse and the Friar in particular as Leong’s art managed to give them a really nice sense of identity and purpose that I feel can sometimes lack. For me, the heart of the piece is with Juliet herself and in her joyful movement on the page. Leong really captures what it means to fall firmly and enormously and dizzily into love and the heightened nature of some of these pages are particularly lovely.

One thing to note is that this is designed to be read left-right and top to bottom rather than the right-left and bottom to top that you might expect with Manga. It also has a little summary of the play and a little (nicely-opinionated and not just written by rote!) biography of Shakespeare himself. I liked it. It’s a nicely handled text which shines new light onto a very old story.

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