ROMEO AND JULIET--1st preview thoughts

[AC126748]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 1:14pm

The worst production I've seen in almost 10 years of going to NYSF.

Show ran 3 hours and 5 minutes, and you could've gotten in line at the Delacorte at 1PM yesterday and still managed to get a ticket. As for the show:

You couldn't find a more mismatched and miscast pair than Isaac and Ambrose. They are completely uncomfortable with each other, and they projected very tentative body language in the scenes that are supposed to illuminate their love and passion. Taken separately, Isaac is a passive, lazy thumbsucker of a Romeo, while Ambrose's anti-climatic Juliet offers Lucia-like madness as early as the balcony scene. That served her well as the play progressed--her Act One closing speech was terrific--but gave the audience nothing to look forward to.

Christopher Evan Welch must have hurt his teeth chewing on the steel and iron scenery, playing Mercutio as an overly effete and whining poseur. Austin Pendleton played the Friar as a high-wired stoner, and--as usual--he didn't know his lines. Only Camryn Manheim's Nurse was successful; dressed in a skin-tight peasant frock and smoking cloves, she was as motherly as Mary and as fiery as Carmen. Perfection.

I can't imagine it getting any better.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 1:18pm

"I can't imagine it getting any better" sounds like a positive note.

[mortgageguy79]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 1:19pm

Thanks for the review! I am still curious :)

[Gothampc]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 1:44pm

I've never thought Michael Greif was a good director. His work is too self-absorbed. You really have to work hard to mess up R&J. It's such a well written piece that it flows by itself.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 1:51pm

Actually, I disagree Goth. I have never seen a successful stage version of R & J. I'm terribly curious about this one, however.

I wish they would bring Andrei Serban back.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 2:13pm

"I have never seen a successful stage version of R & J."

That's because it's such a simple show to do and everyone is fooled into thinking it needs to be junked up with a lot of gimmicks. The essence of R&J is the purity of the show. A bare stage and simplistic acting is all that is needed.

Americans don't understand how to produce Shakespeare. They think audiences are too stupid to "get it" so they have to make it into spectacle. Shakespeare works best when the beauty of the language is given first place.

[WickedGeek28]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 2:16pm

People just don't get Shakespeare - his works are still around today because they are entirely human and deal with realistic people, yet so many actors feel the need to chew the scenery when performing his plays.

[Ourtime992]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 2:29pm

[i]American's don't know how to produce Shakespeare. They think audiences are too stupid to "get it" so they have to make it into spectacle. Shakespeare works best when the beauty of the language is given first place.[/i]
This is a pet peeve of mine. I'm designing posters for two plays by Shakespeare this year at two different schools. And I had to ask, sort of obligatorily, what concept each was going to impose on the work, because it seems many people feel that just has to be done. Heaven forbid Romeo and Juliet actually live in fair Verona. No, it's got to be the roarin' 20's with gangsters, or Twelfth Night in the swingin' 60's, or something else to spice up the look and overpower the script.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 2:59pm

I have no problems whatsoever with recontextualization. The problem with R&J it seems to me is its a mostly poetic play that doesn't have the weight behind it that the other tragedies do: Who the hell cares if the Montagues and the Capulets don't get along?
The other problem is casting: Young attractive actors--even in their twenties--having a tough time handling the language for the most part. Even in the Zeffirelli film version the passion is communicated mostly through visuals rather than through language and you can't really get away with that onstage. And if you have one actor who can do it--Robert Sean Leonard was a reportedly quite wonderful Romeo about ten or so years ago--the other can't keep up so the play becomes lopsided.
I have seen it done fancy, I have seen it done plain, I have never seen it done well.
Oh, and I don't think American directors/actors can't do Shakespeare....witness Jack O'Brien's HENRY IV!

[Gothampc]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 3:23pm

"The problem with R&J it seems to me is its a mostly poetic play that doesn't have the weight behind it that the other tragedies do: Who the hell cares if the Montagues and the Capulets don't get along?"

I disagree, I think it's the best of the tragedies. It's about first love and how much it can hurt. It's about a younger generation not wanting to take on their parent's viewpoint and value system. It's about love and politics and government and everything that society has to experience.

[lostgirl]

Posted: 6/7/07 at 10:09pm

Well personally I think the remarkable think about Shakespeare's language is that it CAN be set in 1920's Chicago or 1960's California or whatever-the langauge will still speak for itself