Staging Romeo and Juliet once more in a world full of Shakespearean revivals seems almost reckless. The play has been performed on roller skates, in swimming pools, and in leather jackets. Therefore, the initial reaction might have been courteous skepticism when Theatr Cymru announced a Welsh-English bilingual production that would open at Shakespeare’s Globe in November 2025. Perhaps another trick. The same old tragedy was covered with yet another deft framing technique. However, Romeo a Juliet proved to be more difficult to ignore. Unlike any previous event held at the Globe’s candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, it was eerie and poignant.
The idea is surprisingly straightforward. Welsh is spoken by the Montagues. English is spoken by the Capulets. Shakespeare’s plot revolves around an ancient family feud, which is mirrored in Romeo and Juliet’s romance across a language barrier. On paper, it sounds tidy—almost too tidy—but in reality, it produced genuine moments of surprise. It feels less like a dramaturgical device and more like witnessing someone fall in love with a whole culture when Juliet, played by Isabella Colby Browne, starts the play speaking only English and progressively picks up Welsh through her developing bond with Romeo. By the end of the play, she is breathing and thinking in Welsh, according to Colby Browne, and the result is shocking.
Colby Browne does not speak Welsh as her first language. There is something subtly potent about the fact that she began learning the language three years ago. She has been candid about using the rehearsal space as both a stage and a classroom, asking her castmates to correct her pronunciation. A different kind of weight was added by Steffan Cennydd, who plays Romeo and speaks Cymraeg as his first language. The contrast between the two actors gave the production an emotional texture that a monolingual version just could not match, and his Romeo spoke Welsh not as performance but as inheritance.
This experiment was designed by director Steffan Donnelly, who is also the artistic director of Theatr Cymru and an associate artist at the Globe. He relied on the play’s 1983 Welsh translation by JT Jones, which is considered a superb literary adaptation. The Welsh text has a slightly archaic quality that works surprisingly well with Shakespeare’s English, and Jones preserved the metre and rhyme scheme. Sitting side by side on a candlelit stage meant to resemble the theaters Shakespeare’s own company would have used, the two languages sounded more like a conversation than a collision.
The linguistic split’s flawless mapping onto the play’s deeper architecture is difficult to ignore. The balcony scene, which has always been the focal point of the play, turned into a sort of negotiation as Colby Browne and Cennydd alternated between Welsh and English in an attempt to communicate in real time. The Welsh translation of Juliet’s question, “Speakest thou from the heart?” is slightly different: “Ai dyna iaith dy galon?” literally means “Is that your heart’s language?” Even though the difference is slight, it has a different impact, making one wonder what it means to speak from a deeper, more personal place within oneself.
The show spent four weeks touring Wales before coming to London, stopping at locations like Theatr Clwyd in Mold and Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre. Donnelly characterized the enthusiastic response from the audience as “overwhelmingly positive.” However, the most important destination was always the Globe. It is thought to be the first time Welsh has ever been spoken on that stage, which is a significant fact in and of itself. Donnelly noted that Shakespeare was likely familiar with the language because he included Welsh-speaking characters in Henry IV Part 1 and partially set Cymbeline in Wales. It’s possible that some of the players in his own company spoke Welsh.
Productions such as these seem to do more than simply revitalize old texts. They inquire as to who gets to speak, on whose stage, and in what language. English schools purchased group tickets, and non-Welsh-speaking audience members could use Theatr Cymru’s translation app, Sibrwd. Donnelly pointed out that some visitors to the Globe might not even be aware that Welsh is a language. A few of them may have returned home to South Korea or Canada, bringing with them the sound of Cymraeg, a language that has endured for thousands of years and is obviously still finding new homes.
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