What happens if you take one of the greatest love stories of all time, William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, and make a few tweaks? That’s what playwright and actor Monadhil Daood did. He replaced the Montagues with Sunnis, the Capulets with Shiites, and set the play in Iraq.
His production of “Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad,” opened to rave reviews in his home country and is now showing at the World Shakespeare Festival in the United Kingdom. We talk with Daood about the production and his wife, Deborah Shaw, who is also at the festival.