“Is love a tender thing?” Romeo asks early in the Shakespeare tragedy to which he and Juliet give their names. Not so much, according to the raw and riveting new production of “Romeo and Juliet” that opened Wednesday at the Almeida Theater here. It’s no surprise that the courtship between the noble Romeo — here played by the sweet-faced Toheeb Jimoh, from TV’s “Ted Lasso” — and the teenage Juliet will end in calamity. Her “Romeo and Juliet,” performed without an intermission, begins with the cast clawing feverishly at a stage wall, onto which are projected crucial lines from the prologue. But as if in haste to get straight to the meat of the play, the wall soon collapses to reveal the citizenry of Verona mid-combat.

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Persons: Romeo, Juliet, Juliet ”, It’s, Romeo —, Toheeb Jimoh, Ted Lasso ” —, Rebecca Frecknall, Olivier, —, “, ” Frecknall, Tennessee Williams, ” Organizations: Almeida Locations: British, New York, Verona