The young, Serbian-Italian director Mario Pavle del Monaco, son of the Serbian mezzo-soprano Dragana del Monaco and grandson of the famous tenor Mario del Monaco, had no ambition to update the long overinterpreted Romeo and Juliet tragedy or to charge it politically. Perhaps that was also due to the difficult conditions in which this production was created. And so he left it at showing an aggressive gang wasting their lives between rum bottles and bullets. Romeo isn't exactly popular either, but is quick to bring a hand grenade. And Julia does not accept the victim role without complaint, but tolerantly.
The work formed the first part of a double evening with which the Würzburg Mainfranken Theater started its new season. Because the main building in the city center is still being renovated, one is currently playing a little outside, in the Blaue Halle theater factory, which a local thermal box company, which has been particularly flourishing since the outbreak of the pandemic, is making available to the theater. Of course, there is no stage machinery there, but the orchestra pit and the uniform stage design, which in this production is dominated by a large wall painting with Cupid and Lustknaben in a kitschy baroque style, have a considerable width (design: Pascal Seibicke ).