Lucy discovers fascinationwith iconic role of Juliet

IT WILL be a full-on weekend for Lucy Wray at Arundel Castle, just as it’s been a full-on summer.

Lucy, who trained at the Oxford School of Drama, graduating in August 2010, is playing Juliet and Viola respectively in Romeo & Juliet and Twelfth Night for the Arundel Festival.

Curiously, Juliet wasn’t ever on her wish-list of roles to play, but now she’s doing it, she’s discovering the fascination.

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“She is so much more than the received ideas you might have of her,” Lucy says. “You might think she is a bit coy, a bit naïve, slightly precious, very sweet - a bit blonde! She is so lovely and she is so nice.

“And then you think of the words that she says, and so many of them are so well-known. But I am wanting to make her my Juliet. She is quite trapped. There are references to her as a baby hawk. She doesn’t know what is going to happen, and Romeo represents a real freedom for here.

“It’s really lovely getting to fall in love every night. When the balcony scene goes so well some nights, I am just so much in love by the interval. When you start, you just can’t be thinking about what is going to happen in the second half. You have to be in the excitement of it all, thinking anything could happen.”

And then, of course, with the fight scene, it all goes so horribly wrong: “It’s to do with adolescence, the hot-headedness which comes with it, not realising that the consequences and ramifications go so far beyond the incident. It gets very serious. The stakes are very high.”

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It provides the perfect contrast with Twelfth Night: “Romeo & Juliet is a fairly straightforward tragedy; Twelfth Night is such a fun ensemble piece and we all have such a great time doing it, working all together.”

Performances are Romeo & Juliet, Thursday, August 25; Twelfth Night, Friday, August 26; Romeo & Juliet, Saturday, August 27). Credit card hotline: 01903 882173 Mon-Sun 9am-5pm.

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