This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare.

It's exhilarating, moving, and not a little astonishing to see the global resonance this has gained, and joining in spiritedly is our local KL Performing Arts Centre.

We paid our tribute too yesterday by going to see Shakespeare's R&J by US playwright Joe Calarco.

It's a fascinating twist on the old story. Four 1950s schoolboys -- trapped in a religious school that majors in military marching, mumbled confession, Latin conjugations, and objectionable cant about the role of women -- discover a copy of Romeo and Juliet, and proceed to act it out.



So we see the classic Romeo and Juliet love story through the filter of their pent-up energies and rebelliousness. R&J becomes a subversive text.

It's not a "gay play", the Australian director is quick to point out. Calarco himself reportedly wanted to produce "a play that would exist in a world where any audience member recognizes that the danger in the first kiss derives from circumstances other than gender".

And, of course, in Shakespeare's time, the female characters would all have been played by boys...

But it's hard to imagine another context where young Malay men could kiss on mainstream stage -- and that unusual quality was reflected in the audience's reaction (an audible ripple of -- what? -- I think it was an amalgam of amusement and shock).

(And interestingly, Calarco notes here a much more openly hostile reception, but points out that "by the time that same audience were watching the 'morning after' scene, a scene ... markedly more sensual and intimate than any other in the play, they were perfectly quiet and attentive. 'They had the same journey as the characters in the play.'" There seem to be definite parallels with our audience last night.)

Be that as it may, as the two boys shyly clasp hands at the end -- remembering the gruelling dream that is now over -- you can't help but feel their relationship has changed. Into what precisely is for us to interpret.

Our concert today included Elgar's Enigma Variations. Very British. The Forsyte Saga in music.

But we also had Dvorak's Cello Concerto, "infused with the spirit of the composer's native Bohemia". Though begun when he was in New York, the piece was completed in his homeland -- a homesick nostalgia that is a little reminiscent of Szymanowski last week. And lastly, excerpts from Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg. Wagner will always carry echoes of my youth.

After all this Britishness, where else for Earl Grey and English tea cake than Harrods?