Shakespeare was barely 30 years old and at the start of his career when he wrote Romeo and Juliet his great tragedy about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. During his lifetime it proved to Shakespeare’s most popular play …. along with Hamlet, and it is  still one of his most frequently performed. 

It has been adapted numerous times over the past five centuries for stage, film, musical, and opera venues. John Gielgud‘s 1935 version kept very close to Shakespeare’s text and used Elizabethan costumes and staging to enhance the drama. In the 20th and into the 21st century, the play has been adapted in versions as diverse as George Cukor‘s 1936 film Romeo and Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli‘s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, Baz Luhrmann‘s 1996 film Romeo + Juliet, and most recently, Carlo Carlei‘s 2013 film Romeo and Juliet.

There has been much speculation about William Shakespeare’s sexuality – so is there a chance that, if it had been acceptable in his time, he might have written his greatest love story about Romeo and Julius instead of Romeo and Juliet?

In 2017 Liverpool Everyman’s production was the first time a major British theatre made it about gay lovers.   There was a queer adaption on off-Broadway simply called R +J and recently as last year Rachel Garnet’s version called Starcrossed played to critical acclaim at London’s Wilton Music Hall.

These are not the only queer adaptions, but we think that the Dutch director  Zara Dwinger and writer Jolein Laarman short film Yulia and Juliet made 5 tears ago is the only time the story is about two lesbians.  In this modern-day remake of a story about forbidden love, two troubled teenage girls fall for each other while locked up in a  detention center