Romeo and Juliet (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 8/13/08)

The silver lining in missing a Tuesday night show due to an overly interesting trip to Stratford was that my festival opened in classical style on Wednesday afternoon with the Festival Theater fanfare and the resonant voice of Festival veteran Peter Donaldson as Friar Laurence (left) reciting the famous opening lines of Romeo and Juliet:

        Two households, both alike in dignity,
        In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

This is technically a Prologue, not part of the Laurence role, but Donaldson, looking down on a modern street scene from above, delivered it splendidly and swept me away into the magic of the theater.  This is exactly what I come to Stratford for.

(Note: following are major spoilers for this particular production.  While knowing what's coming won't spoil it for you, it might reduce the magic a little.  Consider just taking it as highly recommended and not reading further if you plan to see this production.)

I'd been a little nervous about this production before I came to Stratford because the main publicity photo (right, Nikki James and Gareth Potter in the title roles) suggested to me that they were going to do some racially-specific casting and have the Capulets be black and the Montagues white.  I suppose that could be done interestingly (and probably has been, somewhere), but it's so heavy-handed and filled with the potential for political message that it made me a little tired just thinking about it.  I'm also always a little worried when they cast a Festival newcomer in the lead, but at least Nikki James was old enough that she clearly wouldn't be playing the role quite as young as the last time I saw the play at Stratford, when the Juliet was so immature in appearance that it made Romeo look like a pedophile.  (Yes, I realize the character is thirteen, but unless the Romeo also looks very young, casting a childlike Juliet triggers a certain creepiness in modern eyes.) 

I was not at all reassured when my first chat with a local about the play got me a very mixed review focusing on Ms. James.  I'm glad I ignored it and saw the production anyway.  The production was directed by the Festival's new artistic director, Des McAnuff, sole survivor of the triumvirate of incoming directors that dissolved in psychodrama earlier this year.  I'm familiar with McAnuff's work primarily via his Broadway musical background.  I've enjoyed three of his big hits: Big River, Tommy, and the mid-1990s production of How to Succeed in Business... with Matthew Broderick.  But most of his work has been at the La Jolla Playhouse, which I know only by reputation, so I had no idea how he'd do with Shakespeare.  Pretty well, it turns out.

The show opened, as noted, with a modern street scene which (after the opening mini-cascade of puns) quickly erupted into a Montague-Capulet brawl despite the best efforts of a faintly preppy Gordon Miller as the placating Benvolio.  The boys on both sides could best be described as annoying little punks, pulling out their switchblade knives while one of the extras frantically placed a call on her cellphone for help.  The Prince of Verona actually pulled out an automatic and fired off a few rounds to stop the fighting.

The first sight of the senior Montagues and Capulets made the conceit clear: the conflict was not racial (both couples were interracial) but class-based.  The Capulets were rich but slightly vulgar.  I couldn't see from my angle whether Capulet himself was wearing gold chains, but he looked as though he at least used to.  The Montagues had the old-money look, with him in a business suit and her with a lacquered blonde hairdo that screamed "trophy wife" to me.  This was a much more interesting idea than black vs. white, but it did cause one problem: while the beautiful Nikki James could easily be the daughter of an interracial marriage, Gareth Potter is so fair of hair and skin that the first thought that popped into my head was that Lady Montague (white) cuckolded her husband (black).  I'm perfectly happy with a racial and ethnic mix of actors, but since I can't completely turn off my brain I would appreciate it if directors would exercise a little visual logic in their casting.  Thinking about genetics distracts me from the play.

The first part of Romeo and Juliet really is a comedy, and I enjoyed longtime Festival actor Lucy Peacock's romp as the practical and bawdy Nurse (she talks about the role on YouTube, where Stratford has put up a whole series of videos, including a couple of others from Ms. Peacock, which I hope they leave up at the end of the season).  Juliet was a bit of a cypher early on, but Gareth Potter as Romeo made an appropriately sulky young man - though not quite a teenager - in the throes of a crush on his Rosaline (played entertainingly in a mute cameo as a typical schoolgirl in the classic little-plaid-skirt uniform, busy with her friends and her iPod and totally oblivious to Romeo).  Paul Dunn was hilarious as the Capulets' illiterate servant (the role of the Servant was combined into that of Peter) and his brief scene with Romeo ("Stay, fellow; I can read") was a wonderful comic turn.

When the Montagues began preparing to crash the Capulet masque, I was entertained to find them pulling on classically lush Italian Renaissance costumes.  What a lovely way to pay homage to the play's setting, and what a lovely chance for designer Paul Tazewell to play with the fabulous historical costumes that Stratford does so well.  (And what a lovely chance to watch some buff young actors change clothes!)  The costumes were color-coded (blue for Montagues and red for Capulets), but that's a workable design choice for a masque, where it's hard to keep the players straight.  Mercutio (the delightful Evan Buliung) made full use of a gift from the designer, a mask with antennae that let him play up his "beetle brows" line.

What made me sit up in pleased amazement, though, was that the cast then continued in period costume as the entire production shifted from a modern setting to Renaissance Verona.  It became, in effect, a play within the play, as if the tragedy to come were a flashback to centuries before, or simply too intense to play in modern dress (a painful memory distanced by dramatizing it?)  I'm still happily turning over the implications of this switch.  During the production, it felt like it freed the actors from the constraints of modern dress; suddenly we were in classic Shakespearean costume drama mode.  I can't entire explain how it worked for me, but I loved it.  It did mean the loss of the class-conflict theme suggested by the modern dress at the beginning, but I wasn't overly attached to that anyway and didn't miss it at all.

I've never particularly noticed the role of Capulet before, but I have to note John Vickery's wonderful comic bit in Act IV Scene ii as a harassed husband/father/employer beset simultaneously by his daughter, his wife, and the Nurse then suddenly abandoned on stage as all three exit, leaving him saddled with all the wedding preparations ("I'll play the housewife.")  I was also pleased with his beautifully-timed delivery of the sudden switch of Juliet's wedding day ("What say you to Thursday?") a scene or two before.  I don't think of Capulet as a great comic role, but McAnuff drew quite a performance out of Vickery (in his debut season at the Festival, too!)  I'm thrilled that this production so delightfully brought out the magic in scenes I've never made note of before in a play I've seen so many times.

Mercutio has been a favorite of mine ever since I saw my first production of the play as a child, and it's always a shock to me when he dies and the play switches from the comic to the tragic.  Merry, merry Mercutio, spinning a pun on "consort" while simultaneously making the double entendre clear.  Buliung carried the role beautifully to its shocking, sudden end.  It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye...or dies.

The costume switch was an advantage as the play shifted fully into tragic mode.  While Festival actors tend to have a strong command of Shakespeare's language and use it naturally, the heights and depths of Romeo and Juliet's adolescent angst are still easier to carry off in period costume.  Potter and James brought their affair off perfectly.  While Juliet didn't look thirteen, both she and Romeo were convincingly dramatic as miserable teenagers.  Having veterans like Peacock and Donaldson play the Nurse and Friar added an extra dimension to this: you could really picture them wanting to just slap these kids silly and tell them to stop raging around and rolling on the ground and wailing and to just sit and think rationally for a moment!  But adolescents live in the now, and Romeo and Juliet progressed duly to their tragic end...

...and suddenly we were back in modern dress as the grieving parents, the Prince, and a crowd of convincingly shocked young friends entered to see the bodies of the two lovers in the tomb.  All fun and games and dressup and drama...and then the cold reality of dead teenagers descends with a thump.  It could have been ripped from modern headlines about high school students who die suddenly and tragically, complete with the images of stunned young people who have suddenly learned that death is real.  It was wonderful.

No production is perfect, of course, but I didn't have too many quibbles.

Timothy Stickney, tall and husky with dramatic dreadlocks, made an intimidating, almost bullying, Tybalt.  But I was paying such close attention to Lucy Peacock's Nurse that for perhaps the first time I noticed her line when mourning his death:

O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had!
O courteous Tybalt! honest gentleman!

Now, perhaps this was meant as sheer contagious drama on the part of the Nurse, whom it's hard to picture as friends with Tybalt.  But it made me wonder why McAnuff had not tried to draw any gentleness out of Stickney to contrast with the message conveyed by his physique.  I saw nothing in this production or Stickney's performance that convinced me that he had been close enough to Juliet for her to mourn his death or nice enough to the Nurse for her to be upset at all.  Even with no lines to work with, I think a moment could have been found for Tybalt and Juliet to express some cousinly feeling visually (if there was any such moment, I missed it.)  This is less of any issue with some Tybalts, when the actor looks more like just another adolescent, but Stickney's physical presence was so imposing that he just did not look like part of the standard crowd of Capulet and Montague youngsters.

I truly enjoyed Nikki James' performance overall and found her easily able to handle the Shakespearean language naturally (impressive in an actor with, as far as I know, no particular background in classical theater.)  Perhaps she's grown into the role over the three months she's played it.  I had no trouble hearing or understanding her.  But she almost muffed a line, and what a line to muff!  Even people who don't know the play well probably noticed when she stumbled slightly on the famous lines:

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet;

and brought out "that which we call a word" instead.  She corrected instantly and smoothly ("that which we call a word...a rose/By any other word...") without any physical tell, but I was shocked nonetheless.  I hope to see more of Ms. James at the Festival, but she just can't make such mistakes!

"By any other word" is not a mistake, by the way, even though it jars slightly to most modern ears.  While the earliest publication of the play (1597) used "name," a 1599 edition used "word," and that is what appeared in the First Folio.  Most directors and many printed editions use "name," so we're trained to expect it, but Shakespeare's works don't come in definitive editions and McAnuff made a different choice.

The dance at the Capulet's masque was (needless to say) not remotely historical, with the characters leaning back and forth oddly while performing a sort of circle mixer.  Very theatrical, but kind of silly-looking.  I also have to award silly points to the choice to have Romeo and Juliet crawl out of bed after consummating their marriage with Romeo still dressed in his tights.  How exactly did that consummating bit work again?  I don't need the full Verona monty here, but I prefer not to be distracted by wondering if he put his tights back on again before falling asleep or what.

The marvelous thrust stage at the Festival Theatre doesn't need an elaborate set, and designer Heidi Ettinger, new to the Festival, for the most part refrained from cluttering it.  The main design element was a simple curved bridge across the back which served to separate the front and back halves of the set and provided an elevated area for the famous balcony scene.  But I did question the decision to hang a large globe, lit in different colors during different parts of the play, right over the stage.  Romeo's famous line

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

made me want to reply "No, you idiot, it's the honking great moon they've got hanging right above her head!"  But the set, combined with competent lighting design and the abilities of the actors, generally worked well.  I was conscious for a moment of the magic of theater when Romeo and Juliet, after spending the night together in a bed placed on the lower front half of the set, made their farewells as they climbed the bridge, whereupon Romeo promptly swung down off the side of it as the bridge clearly became her balcony and the lower front half clearly became the street (despite the presence of the bed a few feet away).  No change of set needed; they did it all by pure craft and carried me right along with them.  I was so pleased.  I also loved the various knickknacks on Friar Laurence's cluttered desk.

I did find the sound design (by Todd Charlton) a little obvious.  I wondered at one point late in the play when the ominous doom-is-coming music was particularly noticeable around one of Friar Laurence's speeches whether Peter Donaldson was ever tempted to look up and yell, like Nathan Lane in The Producers, "Don't help me!"  Really, the actors are good and the audience is not stupid, so spare us the musical hints!

But these were very minor issues for me in the context of the entire show.  I had a great time at Romeo and Juliet, and I heartily recommend this production to anyone planning to attend the Festival during the remainder of the season or still able to make such plans.  It was a perfect start to my week of theater.

More pictures from the show may be seen at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival's website, which has a page for each show, though I don't know if those subpages will stay up after the end of the season in November.  The pictures only include the modern-dress parts of the production, unfortunately.

Comments

[Serge]

Romeo and Juliet crawl out of bed after consummating their marriage with Romeo still dressed in his tights. How exactly did that consummating bit work again?

He probably figured out how Uther Pendragon managed such a feat while in full armor.

As for casting along racial lines... Before he became a movie actor, Charlton Heston did exactly that with his friend Brock Peters (whom you may remember as Sisko's dad in Deep Space Nine). That took some courage, to do that in the late 1940s / early 1950s.

[Marilee J. Layman]

And in families that are mixed, you can see siblings where some are "clearly" white and some "clearly" black. You can't predict how the genes express.

As to the tights, they didn't have tights back then -- no elastic -- they were just very tight pants and they tied at the top so they could get out. My guess is that he may have just untied and tied again.

It sounds really good, I wish I could go. I like seeing different versions of Romeo and Juliet.

[Susan de Guardiola]

In the case of both genes and tights, the problem is that it distracts from the performance by jolting you back to reality to go "huh???" and then construct some sort of retcon. I don't like having the magic broken even for a moment.

And I do know how period tights work; I'm entirely familiar with the logistics of sex involving opening only the codpiece while leaving the rest of the outfit intact. But since the actor changed into the tights on stage, I also know that these tights went on and off in one piece, codpiece and all, and my experience is that after sex people don't put tights on in order to sleep.

[Marilee J. Layman]

Ah, no, that probably is a bit unrealistic.

[Serge]

I'm always amused by movies that show two people après l'amour, then the woman gets out of bed with some bedding wrapped around her upper body.