Delacorte Theatre, New York
July 5, 2007
copyright © 2007 by Tom Phillips
The Public Theater promoted this show as a 40th anniversary celebration of 1967’s “Summer of Love,” and in this case the promotion does bear some relation to the production. The setting is Mediterranean but the lovers are American hippies — not the tie-dyed variety but on a deeper level, kids who just want to make love not war. Lauren Ambrose as Juliet is a flower child, with long, loose red hair, a simple white frock, little makeup and a personality of spontaneous combustion. She catches fire with a glance from Oscar Isaac as Romeo, a scruffy good-natured swaggerer who looks as if he picked his costume off the street. Their first kiss is hungry, heady, heedless. And just as in the 60s, their summer of love is brief — doomed by the system that encloses them.
Water
and fire are the signal themes of this production. A circle of torches
surrounds the revolving boardwalk of a stage, which in turn encloses a
shallow circular pool of water, where the characters embrace, clash and
die. Romeo literally carries a torch into the tomb of the Capulets, and
extinguishes it in the pool. But the opposites of fire and water are
not just a stage gimmick. Director Michael Greif (of “Rent” fame) uses
it, along with the revolving set, to bring out the world of the play,
where the wheel of causation rapidly grinds everything into its
opposite. The theme is first foreshadowed by Mercutio in the “Queen
Mab” passage, which begins with fairy grace and morphs into a
meditation on foul misfortune. And late in the play it thunders through
Juliet’s chamber, where Lord Capulet orders everything changed into its
contrary:
“Our instruments to melancholy bells,
Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse.
Greif’s production succeeds where most others fail in presenting the demise of these lovers as a real tragedy — not an accident of bad timing, missed messages and such, but the inexorable result of living in a world where love doesn’t really have a chance, overwhelmed as it is by uglier passions. The failure of the Friar’s schemes is here not so much the bumbling of a well-intentioned character, but the impotence of good against evil. Mercutio’s rapier wit — dashingly delivered by Christopher Evan Welch — can’t save him from an accidental, mortal wound. Romeo wants to make love not war, but reverses himself on a dime with Mercutio’s death:
“…O sweet Juliet,
Thy beauty hath made me effeminate,
And in my temper soften’d valour’s steel!”
Juliet’s faithful nurse cops out under pressure from the family. And Juliet herself, in her simple white frock, rages against the darkness but ends up embracing it.
As for the acting, Romeo
and Juliet were all you could ask for, and Mercutio was as agile with
the sword as with his tongue. Some other roles suffered from the
un-subtle approach that’s become the standard style of Shakespeare in
the Park. Camryn Manheim made too much of her ample body and too
little of her lines as the nurse, and even Austin Pendleton as Friar
Laurence shouted too often for my taste.
One
drawback of the circular wet set is that it can’t be turned into a
proper ballroom, so the dancing has to take place on the rotating
boardwalk. Choreographer Sergio Trujillo made the best of it with small
clusters of flamenco dancers, a type of dance that suits the fatalistic
darkness of the play. The ballroom scene, of course, can’t compare with
the Renaissance spectacle that ABT puts on, though it’s more effective
than Peter Martins’ desultory Danish Modern version for NYCB. But
Shakespeare in the Park, besides its location, has three reasons to
claim the title of best R&J in town: words, words, words.