ABSTRACT

Only an unfortunate accident prevented Terry Hands’ largely uncut 2004 production of Romeo and Juliet running straight through at two hours eight minutes. Christina Cole, making her professional debut as Juliet and in a flurry of first-night excitement ran in to the stage left wing and fractured a toe. With no understudies, Cole played through the six week run in various stages of recovery. Sadly for the Clwyd audiences they were not swept along with the ‘the two hours traffic of our stage’, but were rather left to puzzle on why ‘so light a foot would ne’er wear out the everlasting flint’.