Romeo and Juliet, Roanoke College

 

April 16-18, 7:30 pm, Crystal Lynn Van Hise Stage in Olin Hall, Roanoke College.

    It’s hard to make Shakespeare fresh, but these intrepid students and their extremely talented director pulled it off beautifully.

    Everyone knows the story, but director Nelson Barre draws us in by starting not with the famous prologue (“Two households, both alike in dignity…”) but first with the setting of the stage itself. A group of young actors convenes: they chat, they try on costumes, they goof around. Loud music gets them dancing and celebrating together. But they finally calm down, the lights dim… and then comes the much anticipated prologue.

    The end shows a similar “undoing” as the actors remove their costumes and chat. By creating this “framing” for the play itself, Barre highlights the fact that it’s a play. Choices were made. We are watching. They are performing. There’s a certain distance there, which is used to good effect.

    Barre notes in the program, “Our casting reflects the current demographics of our program.” If you know anything about students in higher education, you know they have a lot of women — and the women are probably better and more skilled than most of the men. Not surprisingly, nearly all cast members are female, including both Romeo and Juliet. This is, in many ways, simply the reverse of the practice in Shakespeare’s time, when all parts including female parts would have been played by men.

    But these casting choices are accompanied by even more striking choices: Lord and Lady Capulet’s lines are reversed, such that Juliet now has, rather than a cruel father, a domineering mother. Benvolio and Mercutio, both played by women, have a more-than-platonic friendship. And Romeo’s serial crushes, flowery language, and haste towards marriage read entirely differently coming from a female actor — all of these fit quite easily with the so-called “U Haul lesbian” stereotype, more than any typical straight male.

    The production itself was extremely well done. Barre excels at the visual: look for themes drawn from the text such as stars (portrayed by elegant electric lights that appear at touching moments) and shadow (incredibly moving shadow tableaux grace the death scene, and other silhouettes are used to good effect). Barre is keenly attentive to what we are seeing. Capulets wear various shades of red, while Montagues wear cooler blues, greens, and purples.

    Shakespeare can be difficult to follow, but with good actors who have sufficient physicality, the audience will know what is going on whether the words make sense or not. This group, and this director, had an all-in approach to physicality, especially the humor. They excelled at the slapstick, the gesture, the funny exchange of glances. Mercutio in particular – played superbly by Jesslyn McAllister – nearly stole the show with her strong charisma, all-in commitment to physicality, and comedic timing. Kennedy Swineford’s Nurse character also showed engaging humor and adept physicality. The audience was laughing out loud at both characters, repeatedly.

    At first it seemed the humor and upbeat energy might eclipse the tragedy. We almost miss Romeo and Juliet’s first encounter because the rest of the party is dancing a raucous conga line. (And the party itself is accompanied by a garage band including an Appalachian dulcimer and I think a tuba?) Mercutio and Benvolio’s drunken searching for Romeo the next morning is more engaging than the lovers’ meeting at the balcony scene.

    But Barre’s careful editing of the script moves inevitably toward tragedy. He cut a lengthy Shakespeare classic down to 95 minutes with no intermission. You’d think such a trim would create problems, but it works: the pace is fast, and all the famous lines, which the audience craves so that we can recognize them and feel smart, are still there.

    If Barre has a weakness, it is the auditory component of this production. The actors do admirably well with their lines (with perhaps one or two exceptions), and as noted, even if we don’t catch every word, a) we probably know what they’re saying because it’s familiar; and b) they are making up for any verbal unclarity through their gestures. (Bella Testerman’s delightfully stormy Tybalt is a case in point – I caught few of her words but it was clear that everyone was terrified of her, and with good reason.)

    But the sound design overall is somewhat hard to comprehend. There are several genres of music used, with a lack of coherence between them. Sometimes an odd sound effect would come (a glaring alarm tone when Tybalt died, for example).

    Another auditory weakness, I regret to say, comes from the casting. Too many female actors means too little variability in tone. What starts as a minor problem with the balcony scene (these voices sound so similar you could wonder whether it was Romeo or Juliet who said each line) becomes magnified in the latter half of the play, in which various characters are freaking out, often to each other. One does, eventually, become weary of all the high pitched distress.

    I do think with a female-dominant cast it is still possible to offer greater variations on shrieking, groaning, and blubbering — but I would guess that Barre did not consider this. Only a handful of actors manage a different tone than the breathless flustered whinny: Mercutio (as noted – Jesslyn McAllister shines brightly here), Peter (a minor character excellently played by Ruthie Nutt), and to some degree Benvolio (who Maggie Raker gives a very winning and believable personality).But these three characters are essentially absent from the second half of the play.

    Mary Langan does solid work with Romeo as the aforementioned U-Haul lesbian. Makenna Keith’s Juliet is very well done. Her “gallop apace, ye fiery footed steeds” monologue is juxtaposed to the bloodbath of Mercutio and Tybalt’s deaths in a really stunning visual and editing choice on Barre’s part, and Keith shows genuine emotional depth to the Juliet character which I had not seen in other portrayals. These two strong actors did well with what are, frankly, not Shakespeare’s most compelling of characters.

    The play ends on a divided note: the actors go back to their lives, replacing their costumes and making plans for the evening, laughing and joking… except for the two who played Romeo and Juliet. These two remain shellshocked and hugging, in a final, haunting, shadowed tableau.

    And this is why we watch tragedies: something about them stays with us, even after we leave the theater. I’d forgotten the whole body count in this play (Paris?? Really??) and so did carry that loss, that shock, with me even with the pleasantries and the departure from the theater. Just as with the actors, some part of me was still shellshocked and hugging while the rest of life goes on. There is tragedy in the midst of comedy, and vice versa – as ably demonstrated by this really top notch performance.