Romeo & Juliet (ART)

From: "will stackman" profwlll@yahoo.com

Subject: Quicktake - "Romeo & Juliet" by Wm. Shakespeare

Date: Wed, Feb 15, 11:45 PM

Quicktake on ROMEO & JULIET

     The A.R.T.'s reputation for making Shakespeare tedious remains unblemished with this latest production. There was some hope that when Hungarian Janos Szasz defected to do a movie, a new director, Israeli Gadi Roll, might avoid some of the excesses usually perpetrated, especially when the black actor playing Romeo left over "creative differences" to be replaced by ART/MXART graduate Mickey Solis, who'd been originally cast as Benvolio. No such luck; the auteur strikes again. The current production is Shakespeare played at full bellow in eccentric modern dress on a stage, a rectangle covered with dark sand, placed between two halves of the audience,. The acoustics of the Loeb are made worse by this arrangement, so much so that some of the cast. even seasoned ART members, seem to be getting hoarse. Or it could be the particles floating in the air from the powdery stage covering.

     The show is made longer by incessant scenery rearrangement, which has stagehands in black in the darkness unrolling and rerolling carpets, removing and resetting chairs and stand lights. Almost all humor has been squelched along with almost every trace of romance. The biggest laugh is unintentional as Juliet clambers down a ladder from the steel "balcony" which extends from the rear to over the house stage right. Her cowboy boots, worn on alll occasions, are the final touch. Romeo and his friends are upper class hoodlums given to wielding knives, obviouysly fake and wooden, which makes the fight scenes athletic exercises. There have been a number of productions hereabouts featuring the star-crossed lovers, including the New Rep's inaugural effort last fall, which used modern dress and contemporary metaphors to reinvigorate the play. This attempt in international style is the least successful. Fortunately, Shakespeare fans have BTW's "Othello" starring Jonathan Epstein opening this weekend at the BCA or Trinity's more eccentric "Hamlet" as options.

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"Romeo & Juliet" by Wm. Shakespeare, Feb.4 - Mar.16

A.R.T. at Loeb Drama Center

64 Brattle St. Harvard Sq., (617) 547 - 8300
A.R.T.