Wish upon a star

Out come the stars in Kenneth Branagh’s Romeo and Juliet. He musters a well-drilled, celebrity-ridden crew but they can’t quite get the rocket off the launchpad. The stylish setting evokes Italy in the early 1950s. The girls wear New Look frocks and the boys sport tight slacks and shirtsleeves. Christopher Oram’s muted set has bland marble walls and tasteless squared-off pillars like a modern dictator’s palace on the Euphrates. A rare failure.

Romeo is played by Game of Thrones inmate Richard Madden, who seems a handsome enough specimen, but Branagh might have asked him to act with his soul rather than his forearms. And he looks too mature. To kill a rival and throw away your life for a 13-year-old you’ve met three times is the lunatic act of a dippy kid, not the choice of a sleek adult with a designer shirt and hand-made shoes. Branagh’s textual choices create problems early on.