Theatre in Review: Romeo and Juliet (Classic Stage Company)

	T.R. Knight and Julian Cihi. Photo: Joan Marcus

I really hate to state the obvious, but these are confused times, so here goes: If you're going to stage Shakespeare's plays, you will need actors who can handle his verse. Got it?

This seemingly irrefutable proposition is apparently big news in New York these days, where Romeo and Juliet is being wrestled to a draw both on and off Broadway. On Broadway, many in David Leveaux's cast are often inaudible -- mumbling when they aren't swallowing whole speeches in a single breath. At Classic Stage Company, you can hear the words, but they are stripped of any music or meaning. In a cast of twelve, arguably only three understand how to bend Shakespeare's richly ornamented language to the business of making drama.

Whenever Daniel Davis is on stage as Friar Laurence, this production is lifted to another level. Overall, his is a fairly conventional characterization, giving us an affable man of God who assents to Romeo and Juliet's rash marriage in the naïve hope that he can make peace between the Montagues and Capulets. But consider the Act II scene in which he tries to convince Romeo, who has killed Juliet's cousin Tybalt (a solid performance by Dion Mucciacito) that his punishment -- banishment to Mantua -- is far from being the disaster it first appears. ("A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back/Happiness courts thee in her best array/But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench/Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love.") Typically, the actor playing Friar Laurence uses his best coaxing manner to bring the hot-blooded young man around. Davis will have none of that; his patience exhausted, his temper stretched to the breaking point, he unleashes a tidal wave of fury over the course of some 50 lines of verse, administering a kind of shock therapy aimed at bringing Romeo back from the brink of despair. Racing through this speech, yet never sacrificing either its powerful rhythm or the life-or-death warning contained within, Davis offers an object lesson that many of his colleagues would do well to study closely.

Equally arresting are David Garrison and Kathryn Meisle as Lord and Lady Capulet. He is a dapper tyrant with a bit of a drinking problem; watch him stepping unsteadily into Juliet's chamber. She is an aggrieved spouse who tries, and fails, to hide her distaste for her husband's bullying ways. The scene in which they decide, almost instantly following the murder of Tybalt, to hastily marry off Juliet to Paris has always seemed to me the play's most problematic moment. What are we to make of such a strangely callous decision? Do they feel no grief for their slain kinsman or any pity for their obviously distraught daughter? Garrison and Meisle carefully reshape the scene into the product of a bitter, and unspoken, marital skirmish -- Lord Capulet wants the marriage to take place immediately while Lady Capulet does not, and when she gives the news to her daughter, can barely contain her distaste. It's an original choice, repositioning Juliet as a pawn in her parents' long-running battle, and it offers striking new insights into the Capulet household.

But if these relatively minor characters offer the most memorable contributions, then something is terribly wrong. Elizabeth Olsen has made a name for herself in film; she was especially striking as the sullen, mysterious heroine in Martha Marcy May Marlene, and on stage she projects a probing intelligence. With sufficient drilling in period style, she could make a perfectly good Juliet. She is at her best in the second act, giving a deadly serious finality to a speech that often plays like a young girl's fantasy. ("Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die/Take him and cut him out in little stars/And he will make the face of heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night.") But too much of the time, she seems in over her head, tearing through her lines as if in a race to get done by 10:30. Needless to say, nothing is emphasized, and many of her speeches pass by in a blur.

Even more dismaying is the Romeo of Julian Cihi. Admittedly, a late arrival to the cast following the departure of Finn Wittrock, he delivers all of his lines in the same casual, cool conversational tone, whether pining for the fair Rosalind, furiously wooing Juliet, or committing a murderous act of revenge. Love, death, banishment -- it's all no big deal to this callow youth. The balcony scene in particular comes off as so much teenage flirting, with no sense that ungovernable passions are being unleashed by this pair of innocents.

Cihi and Olsen are, of course, relative newcomers. Harder to credit are two key supporting performances by old pros. On Broadway, Christian Camargo has taken a lot grief for his willfully strange Mercutio, but he is nothing compared to T. R. Knight's take on the role. Mercutio should be magnetic, insolent, a wit who enjoys tweaking the egos around him; Knight creates a character who is consistently sullen, rude, and given to perverse line readings that are likely to leave you scratching your head. He has the odd moment of inspiration -- for example, when, just before their duel, he drops his pants in response to Tybalt's removing his shirt. But most of the time, his intentions baffle.

At least Daphne Rubin-Vega offers a fresh take on the character of the Nurse. Decades younger and infinitely more attractive than the actresses usually cast in the role, she gives us a chic confidante, a kind of contemporary duenna figure in designer outfits. Again, she has her moments, particularly when, in a mixture of fear and pragmatism, she urges Juliet to forget her marriage to Romeo and tie the knot with Paris. But she also employs a thick Latin accent that makes her lines frequently hard to understand; her decision to refer to Romeo as Ro-MAY-oh quickly becomes irritating.

As the above indicates, the director, Tea Alagic, is capable of providing striking and unusual bits of business -- when Mercutio, in a gesture of contempt, throws a handful of coins at the Nurse's feet, or when the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt suddenly erupts in blood. Even so, this scene is awkwardly staged; tellingly, no fight director is credited. Glaringly absent is any overarching point of view, along with a pulse of passion. This is a hot-blooded play in which emotions strike like lightning, but you wouldn't know it here.

The lack of clear direction shows in the production design. Marsha Ginsberg's set, a largely empty space with a couple of tables and chairs, an unadorned upstage wall, and a polished wood floor, suggests a rehearsal room. (Do not look for a balcony in the balcony scene and you will not be disappointed.) This is fine as far as it goes, but then why has Clint Ramos dressed everyone so elaborately and in so many different styles? Lord Capulet looks like he wandered in from Downton Abbey while Lady Capulet could be one of the Real Housewives of Verona. Juliet wanders from her house to Friar Laurence's cell in a slip and combat boots. And why, at the Capulets' ball (here restyled as a fancy-dress party set to electronic dance music), must Romeo wear a Winnie the Pooh head?

On the plus side, Jason Lyons' always-theatrical lighting contrasts saturated color washes with starker, white-light looks; he also creates a number of compelling effects with side washes and shadows on the upstage wall. Ryan Rumery's sound design nicely reinforces his original music.

But it's impossible to tell what drove Alagic and her collaborators to revive Romeo and Juliet in the first place. I can understand a director's feeling hard-pressed to come up with something to say about such a familiar drama; I am stunned to see two productions in a single month in which neither director seems to have any clear idea at all about it. Afterwards, I heard the words of T. S. Eliot in my head: "We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form."-- -- David Barbour