Some plays work really well in the time-period in which they're set. I mean, for most viewers, even assuming the absolute best of conditions, the first ten-to-fifteen minutes of any given Shakespeare play are going to be a pretty tough plunge in the deep end. Therefore, when you're not attempting to simultaneously decode the author's 400 year-old dialogue, as well as an additional directorial "concept" that is also telegraphing that "certain Things" in fact "in this world" actually "mean Other Things," playing Shakespeare in more-or-less early modern garb has obvious virtues.
But no such notion can clear every hurdle. Sure, by not giving the characters modern clothes, or coming up with some justification as to why they're referring to their guns as "blades," you avoid certain barriers that make Shakespeare hard to understand for a contemporary audience, but one should never back into such a choice. Ideally, the director would have a burning passion as to why the drama needs placement in the Italian renaissance in order to sing, because the inverse is also true that simply transplanting the action into some land of suits and ties will never inherently convey "relevance" to any specific play.
I couldn't say why director Sam White chose this particular brand of generically period, Bard-cosplay costuming for her production of Romeo and Juliet on the Festival Stage at the Stratford Festival, here in charming Ontario. Certainly, her production last year of Wedding Band (in the Tom Patterson Theatre here in Stratford) worked excellently in its grounded, domestic intricacies, though the canvas of Alice Childress' theatre has different demands than Shakespeare's. Only in a few performances does what made Wedding Band special shine in this most heated of tragedies, and the saga of two children finding connection across a barrier of hatred never quite finds its burning zeal.
Jessica B. Hill creates the most conflicted, emotionally mature Lady Capulet I've ever seen. The way White concocts the conversation between Hill, the Nurse (Glynis Ranney, hokey but effective) and Juliet (Vanessa Sears) to show how Lady Capulet realizes she is less of a mother to her daughter than the woman who actually nursed her, and proceeds to attempt to establish intimacy via the route of presenting the idea of Juliet's marriage, is a route through that group dynamic that is absolutely revelatory. Hill is terrifically served by Graham Abbey as her husband Capulet, and the wails the two impart over the body of what they believe to be their dead daughter is the closest the production has to a tear-jerking moment. Abbey in general is a delightful conduit of dad energy, and until Capulet turns into the ultimate domestic tyrant when he rages at Juliet for her unwillingness to marry Paris (Austin Eckert), he is really quite pleasant to be around.
Attention must also be paid to Scott Wentworth as Friar Laurence, who manages two remarkable feats in his first scene on the stage: he conveys just how much the flora and fauna of the natural world mean on an emotional level to this Franciscan father, and then uses his metaphors about good and evil commingling in all living beings to show why he believes the covert marriage of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet may actually bring about something positive out of something negative. Also, Wentworth's shift from judgmental in the scene where he's about to marry Juliet to Romeo, when he first looks askance at their easy PDA, then becomes tearful after hearing their verbal protestations of love, perfectly highlights how people should encounter this story: for all the para-critical talk of them just being dumb kids, if you actually spend time in the young lovers' company, you realize their genius and remarkability are self-evident.
Steven Hao provides easy joviality as Benvolio, and Sears lives each line of Juliet's with impressive honesty and emotional commitment (though you wish she had a stronger foil in Jonathan Mason's undefined Romeo). Andrew Iles' Mercutio stands uncomfortably between comic-relief and predator with no directorial commentary on why people seem to find him so irresistible (you get the sense White doesn't like the character much). Iles' delivery adds a roadblock to rhetorical communication: "O, then I see Queen ["who?"] hath been with you"; at the performance I saw, many verbal details on the part of the overall ensemble got swallowed.
The elements of White's production that reach most towards inventiveness stumble in the attempt. The idea to have Juliet serve as the opening Chorus ("Two households...") and be dressed as a physical embodiment of the dust from the stars that crossed her and Romeo, is a terrific idea, but at the performance I saw something was clearly amiss with the the sound mixing or the microphone or the mic placement or something or another, and thus Sears' singing of the speech as an aria was rendered so tough to understand it began the production on a wildly shaky and unfair note. The doubling of Mercutio and the Apothecary was similarly almost intriguing: a noteworthy idea executed with no real perspective; which was also true of the doubling of Balthazar and Friar John (both John Kirkpatrick), the two dudes who bring news that is both wrong and bad. The suggestion of a sexual encounter between R&J at the top of Act 3, Scene 5 was timid and unnecessary, and Anita Notoly's fight direction of the various duels was so flashy as to render any character-driven story within the violence unintelligible.
While the bare adornment of the festival stage is a feature of many Stratford productions, here the stripped-down choice feels ill-advised, as the romantic passion of the titular star-crossed lovers doesn't mix the fire and powder enough to consume the theatre solely on linguistic bases. One feels White could have taken more extreme advantage of the thrust stage's benefits, as, in an ideal world, scene-changes could be shrouded with dark while another scene is going on, and thus you wouldn't have to wait for the inevitable "lights change, actors enter with furniture, put it somewhere, leave, beat, lights change, new scene begins" tedium. (And I won't even pretend to understand why Juliet's bed needed so many exits and entrances on its way up and down from the trap door.) The thrust stage's potential for poetic fluidity is largely unused.
All in all, the production is uninventive, earthbound, and unable to carry you on what should be a heartbreaking journey. Whatever the virtue of certain performers, you leave the production cold and nonplussed. Hopefully White can have more chances to bring her personal zeal to Shakespeare at the festival. As it stands, this R&J loves far too moderately.
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