Tom Holland's triumphant turn as Romeo drops a hint of a McKellen in the making

AFTER 16 years away from the stage, mostly playing Spider-Man, Tom Holland makes an amazing return to live theatre as a complex, muscular Romeo in Jamie Lloyd’s latest stripped-back, massively buzzworthy reinvention of a classic.

- Romeo & Juliet Duke

Holland is matched by Francesca Amewudah-Rivers as a fiercely still and sardonic Juliet.

Their shared triumph in a sold-out show is the best revenge on cowardly online racists who criticised their pairing. Holland’s Romeo starts off boyish and ends up f l inty and bruised. Amewudah-Rivers’s Juliet is smarter and more serious than him and he knows it. They’re the most spellbinding starcrossed lovers I’ve seen in years.

Lloyd’s production is characteristically stark and bracing. The action is sliced, diced and interspliced into a brisk two hours, laced with occasional anachronisms, blinding lights and jagged bursts of industrial music.

There’s no set apart from a mesh wall, a video screen and a big sign saying “VERONA”. The actors wear monochrome jeans, jackets and hoodies and speak their lines with icy clarity through microphones on stands or taped to their cheeks.