This summer the Northwest witnessed competing Romeo and Juliets as both the Intiman Theatre Festival and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival decided to bring the timeless lovers back on stage. While I haven’t had a chance to catch Seattle’s production, I was delighted with OSF’s take. Director Laird Williamson has reset the play to the year 1840 and placed the action in Alta, California, where Mexican families live under the rule of the American General Prince.
After an imaginative prologue recited by the entire cast, I began to worry that things might go amiss. Early lines in the initial Montague/Capulet conflict seemed to be spoken hurriedly by somewhat frenetic actors. But as soon as Daniel Jose Molina made his first entrance as Romeo, we were indeed in good hands. Costume Designer Susan Tsu has the young Montague enter enwrapped in a warm colored serape—serving well to indicate the sheltered, somewhat naïve young man so in love with love. Molina seems to be a rising star, appearing here in his first major role. His honest thoughtful portrayal of Romeo successfully anchors the production.
Alejandra Escalante was determined to muster a great deal of spunk and courage in her rendering of Juliet and she succeeds in spades. In her first scene with the Nurse, played by Isabel Monk O’Connor and her mother Dona Capulet (Vilma Silva), Alejandra establishes Juliet as a preternaturally confident, articulate young woman. Silva makes some unique choices in her role as Juliet’s mother, seeming to innately disapprove of the proposed husband Paris. I would have liked these choices further fleshed out in later scenes.
The early California setting proves most useful and entertaining in the Capulet ball. A charming Don Capulet (Elijah Alexander) insists the festive folk dancing continue (Alonzo Lee Moore IV served as choreographer) even though a perturbed Tybalt (Fajer Al-Kaisi) has spotted the unwanted party crasher from the wrong family in their midst.
The initial meeting of the young lovers worked as well as any I have seen in countless productions of this play. Molina and Escalante as the young lovers, create magic, weaving youthful curiosity, wit, charm and some solid young lust into their dialogue. Their balcony scene that immediately follows their first encounter, could well serve as a tutorial for young Shakespearean actors. Indeed, Escalante is able to take some of the most famous lines in all of theater and make them sound new and important again.
OSF regular Tony Debruno plays the well meaning but ineffectual Friar Laurence. His important scene with the banished and weeping Romeo works wonderfully. We are as nearly as impressed as The Nurse “O, what learning is!” with the old Friar’s wisdom, in insisting that Romeo count his lucky stars and return to Juliet to spend their wedding night.
Director Williamson pulls some real stage magic in some of the latter scenes of the second act. I enjoyed how ghosts surround Romeo when Juliet worries that he appears “As one dead in the bottom of a tomb,” before he makes his final departure for Mantua. Most impressive was the wonderfully inventive way Juliet is able to appear in the banished Romeo’s dream, gently flying into the scene.
Elijah Alexander as Don Capulet is able to find a great deal of subtlety in a part that often is played as a one note enraged father. In his confrontation with Juliet, who wants nothing to do with his plan to have her immediately wed Paris, he displays a tormented and torn soul wanting to establish order and obedience with a daughter he still dearly loves. The scene that is usually simply shocking becomes heart rending and thought provoking in this production.
The original concept of bringing the story to Alta, California adds an unexpected urgency and freshness to the majority of the play. This is the second summer in a row, that OSF has interlaced Hispanic elements and language into a Shakespeare production. And while this cultural mash-up might have succeeded more dynamically in last year’s Measure for Measure, it certainly was quite effective in this year’s show. OSF’s unique choices made in Romeo and Juliet never seemed gimmicky. If you think you can’t possibly see something new in this Shakespearian chestnut, you may indeed be in for a very pleasant theatrical surprise.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet directed by Laird Williamson, sets by Michael Ganio, Costumes by Susan Tsu, Lights by Don Darnutzer, Composer and sound deisgner David Reiffel, Dramaturgy by Lydia G. Garcia Cross and Choreography by Alonza Lee Moore IV performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Angus Bowmer theater through November 4th. Go to www.osfashland.org for calendar and tickets.