The Stratford Festival’s latest version of Romeo and Juliet may be its best
NO STRANGER TO THE FESTIVAL, STRATFORD’S NEWEST STAGING OF ROMEO AND JULIET MAY BE ITS BEST
Romeo and Juliet Festival Theatre, Stratford
It’s no secret that Romeo and Juliet ends in a tomb. In Stratford’s new production it begins there as well. Four black- clad candle- bearing women, identified in the program as “widows,” file into a vault while above them the prologue, spoken with uncommon point and power by Sarah Dodd, describes the family feud that sparks and underlies the tragedy. Whether this is prophecy or recap isn’t clear. Either way it’s a great start.
The same doom- laden figures ( are they the ghosts of quarrels past?) reappear later on, at suitably violent intervals; less effectively since at these points they’re underlining the obvious. But they don’t seriously hamper the onward rush of Scott Wentworth’s production, which is notable for speed and sensitivity.
It unfolds handsomely in 17 thcentury costumes ( Christina Poddubiuk) on the Festival Theatre’s original steps- and- balcony setting; always a pleasure to see restored, and used here for maximum economy so that a new scene begins almost before the old one has ended. This, by the way, is how Shakespeare was customarily done in the despised 1950s, as also presumably in the 1590s. And thus, as somebody says in another play, the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
Romeo and Juliet is a play written in a cascade of verbal styles. This production revels in them all. It’s often observed that when the two lovers meet for the first time, at the Capulets’ ball, their dialogue takes the form of a sonnet. This, though, is the first time I have seen it played as though they were aware of it. They take conscious joy in matching one another’s words, line for line. It’s no wonder they’ve bonded by the end of it. And they remain word- conscious but in tellingly different ways.
For Antoine Yared’s Romeo, a metaphor is something to be pursued, indulged in for its own sake. For Sara Farb’s Juliet, it’s a way of hammering out a meaning. The bond and the contrast make the balcony scene both thrilling and uncommonly delightful. She downright yells at the nurse who tries to summon her indoors – I’ve never heard it done like that before. She’s always the more practical of the two, doggedly pulling the truth out of the nurse who’s teasing her by withholding it. He’s the hysteric, lying sobbing on the floor of Friar Laurence’s cell after banishment, refusing comfort. “Art thou a man?” asks the friar, but he remains a boy almost till the end. She becomes a woman very fast. The two performances only falter in their post- marital scene, a morning after that here bears few traces of the night before.
Seana McKenna is a wonderfully complete Nurse, unforcedly squeezing all the comic juice out of her absentmindedness, willed and otherwise. Yet, she’s sobering in a chilling instant when disaster looms. Evan Buliung is an electric Mercutio, a compulsive jokester with a self- destructive edge. Randy Hughson’s Capulet can turn on a dime from geniality to anger, a transformation he practices on his nephew Tybalt in a good peace- making cause and then unleashes sadistically on his daughter in a thoroughly bad one. Wayne Best is a sympathetic ( in all senses) Friar and Jamie Mac a likably pacific Benvolio. The starving apothecary from whom Romeo buys poison is got up as a yellow- beaked bird; if this is symbolism, I don’t get it. Otherwise, everything rings true: funny, moving, thrilling – the fights are super, and so are the dances.
This play, so often produced, has nevertheless a habit of coming fresh to life on the Festival stage; that was true of Tim Carroll’s production before this one and of Miles Potter’s before that. But Wentworth’s may be the best of them all. Romeo and Juliet is in repertory through October 21.