Romeo & Juliet
"What's in a name?"
"Wherefore art thou, Romeo?"
"A plague on both your houses!"...
These are just a few of the dozen or so famous lines from what is arguably the most famous of Shakespeare's plays (a tough thing to judge when you think of the 37 plays in his coda). The cast from the artfully directed (by Kari Steinbach) production did a yeoman(woman)'s job with this "modern" day plot of the love-found/love-lost play.
Some people don't like it when Shakespeare is modernized - the iambic pentameter is almost too much to take when the actors are running around in LL Bean jeans and Birkenstock sandals. But this performance is convincing to tell the story of two families, who might just be living across town from one another in middle America, who use the love of two teenagers to argue and fight, love and hate one another over the most shallow of things - a family name. But, there are deeper themes as well. The status of the family, the power of vengeance for past wrongs, the feckless attempts of parents to control their children, the futility of hate trying to triumph over love (or, does it actually do that at the twist of the end?!), and the great loss to loved ones of the promise of youth, are all at stake. This cast and crew did a great job with all of that. Bravo!
"Wherefore art thou, Romeo?"
"A plague on both your houses!"...
These are just a few of the dozen or so famous lines from what is arguably the most famous of Shakespeare's plays (a tough thing to judge when you think of the 37 plays in his coda). The cast from the artfully directed (by Kari Steinbach) production did a yeoman(woman)'s job with this "modern" day plot of the love-found/love-lost play.
Some people don't like it when Shakespeare is modernized - the iambic pentameter is almost too much to take when the actors are running around in LL Bean jeans and Birkenstock sandals. But this performance is convincing to tell the story of two families, who might just be living across town from one another in middle America, who use the love of two teenagers to argue and fight, love and hate one another over the most shallow of things - a family name. But, there are deeper themes as well. The status of the family, the power of vengeance for past wrongs, the feckless attempts of parents to control their children, the futility of hate trying to triumph over love (or, does it actually do that at the twist of the end?!), and the great loss to loved ones of the promise of youth, are all at stake. This cast and crew did a great job with all of that. Bravo!