Pantomeo and Juliet
★★★☆☆ Star-cross’d
Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16): Mon 18 – Sat 23 Aug 2025
Review by Rebecca Mahar
Pig’s Ear Productions, the group responsible for last year’s Panto Macbeth are back with another heavily abridged and somewhat embroidered Shakespeare in Pantomeo and Juliet, at Riddles Court for the last week of the Fringe.
Following on Panto Macbeth, in which there was “kidnapping, mass murder, and a show that was five minutes too long; according to the Greenside staff one of these was a much bigger deal than the others,” Pantomeo and Juliet works to cram Romeo and Juliet into fifty minutes with plenty of panto-based shenanigans along the way.
Buster van der Geest, Sam Morrison, Nicole Gibson Morales and Bella Yow. Pic: Pig’s Ear.
Writer and director Mackenzie Galbraith also serves as the show’s narrator, trying to keep the show to time, holding up audience reactions signs, and working very hard to convince everyone that all the characters in the play are eighteen or older in order to avoid any pesky lawsuits. Galbraith’s adaptation has naturally done away with most of the original script, leaving just enough information for the audience to more or less understand what’s going on while making space for the aforementioned shenanigans.
Romeo is played in swaggering fuckboy fashion by Kady Lyon, her Romeo exaggerating his height every time he appears and reintroduces himself, constantly on the pull between melodramatic monologues. Meanwhile Juliet, played by Eilidh Read (seeking representation) is the only one who seems to be taking this seriously— though she manages to get swept up in the backstage drama of the St. Andrews Pantomime Club.
Romeo’s pals Benvolio and Mercutio are played by Buster van der Geest* and Sam Morrison respectively, with the latter also taking the role of the Nurse, Ana Sthesia. The boys are pretty much afterthoughts in this production, but the Nurse takes on a much larger role, including a romantic subplot with Friar Lawrence.
hiya, pals!
Or is it with Paris? It’s hard to say, as Adam Maconachie plays a Paris that has a zero-hours contract with every city service and several other sidelines including Verona walking tours. Maconachie bounds about the stage with a cheery “hiya, pals!” at his every appearance, whether he’s Paris, a traffic warden, the Friar, or a David Attenborough-esque narrator (wasn’t that Mackenzie’s job?).
The baddies of the piece are Bella Yow as Tybalt, turned to the dark side be being rejected from Lord Montague’s theatre company, now set on producing her own version of Cats. She’s joined by henchboy Balthazar (Nicole Gibson Morales), which is a bit odd considering that Balthasar was originally Romeo’s servant, but hey-ho. Both are melodramatically hilarious.
Kady Lyon and Mackenzie Galbraith. Pic: Pig’s Ear.
As a whole, it’s not quite up to the standard of Panto Macbeth: a bit slipshod, the definition between onstage and backstage drama not as crisp as it should be for maximum hilarity, the original plot not as well communicated, and the technical side of things rather bland. That does not, however, stop it from being an entertaining show that succeeds in running to time and only killing a few people.
* “Clone of Buster van der Geest, who killed off most of the St. Andrews Pantomime Club and seized control of the group and then was so haunted by the ghosts of his victims that he, in a move emblematic of his symbolic (and well-written) transformation into the Scottish King admitted his crimes in front of the audience of the critically-acclaimed Panto Macbeth,” according to Pig’s Ear Productions.
Running time: 50 minutes (no interval).
Greenside @ Riddles Court (Thistle Theatre), 322 Lawnmarket EH1 2PG (Venue 16).
Monday 18 – Saturday 23 August 2025.
Daily: 1.50pm.
Tickets and details: Book here on EdFringe.com.
Instagram: @pigsearproductions
ENDS
